Lard is defined as animal fat acquired from the adipose tissue of pigs and is not permitted for human consumption or external use by certain religions such as Islam and Judaism. Due to its low-cost availability for commercial use, it is often mixed with other vegetable oils mistakenly or deliberately and causes loss of consumer trust; hence, its detection in food products is essential. Consumers tend to know the authenticity of commercially available edible oils. However, edible oils are subjected to adulteration risks with lard, which breaches consumer rights. In the present study, we designed a transmission Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR)-based method for the rapid detection of lard in sunflower, canola, coconut, olive, and mustard oils. For this purpose, the selected oils were adulterated with lard in different concentration ratios (10:0, 9:1, 7:3, 6:4, 4:6, 3:7, 0:10). A single calibration model was developed for 35 standards (seven standards from each individual five oils) in the frequency range between 1078.01 and 1246.75 cm −1 to determine the relationship between actual adulterant concentration and FT-IR predicted concentrations using a partial least squares (PLS) method. The results of the present study indicated that FT-IR in combination with PLS has the potential to evaluate adulteration of edible oils with lard through single calibration as a rapid, nondestructive, and effective alternative method.

The development of metal nanoparticle-based facile colorimetric assays for drugs and insecticides is an emerging area of current scientific research. In the present work, polypropylene glycol was used for stabilization of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) in a simple one-pot two-phase process and subsequently employed it for the specific detection of cephradine (CPH). The characterization of the prepared PPG-AuNPs was conducted through various analytical techniques such as UV-visible spectrophotometry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), zeta potential and zetasizer techniques. As the major target of the study, the stabilized PPG-AuNPs were employed for colorimetric detection of CPH and other drugs. Typical wine-red colour of PPG-AuNPs disappeared immediately and surface plasmon resonance band quenched by addition of CPH in the presence of several other interferents (drugs and salts) and in real samples. PPG-AuNPs permitted efficient, selective, reliable and rapid determination in a concentration range of 0.01–120 mM with a detection limit (LoD) of 11.0 mM. The developed sensor has the potential to be used for fast scanning of pharmaceutical formulations for quantification of CPH at production facilities.