Development of a method based on ATR‐FTIR spectroscopy to detect maple syrup adulterated with added syrups

Abstract

BACKGROUNDFood adulteration is a global concern whether it takes place intentionally or incidentally. In Canada, maple syrup is susceptible to being adulterated with cheaper syrups such as corn, beet, cane syrups, and many more due to its high price and economical importance.RESULTSIn this study, the use of Attenuated Total Reflection Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR‐FTIR) spectroscopy was investigated to detect maple syrups adulterated with fifteen various sugar syrups at different concentration levels. The spectra were collected in the range of 4000‐650 cm−1 in the absorbance unit. These spectra were used to build six libraries and three models. A method that is capable of performing a qualitative library search using a similarity search which is based on the first derivative correlation search algorithm was developed. This method was further evaluated and proved to be able to successfully capture adulterated and reject non‐adulterated maple syrups belonging to the color grades golden, and amber maple syrups with an accuracy of 93.9%, and 92.3%, respectively. However, for the maple syrup belonging to the dark color grade, this method demonstrated low specificity of 33.3%, and due to that, it was only able to adequately detect adulterated samples and improperly reject the non‐adulterated ones with an accuracy of 81.4%.CONCLUSIONThis simple and rapid method has great potential to be implemented in different steps of the maple syrup supply chain for early adulteration detection, particularly for golden and amber samples, and further evaluation and improvements are required for the dark color grade.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.