“…However, it is considered that organic complexes and chelates with inorganic components are reflected in near-infrared spectra changes (Kumagai et al, 2003;Chen et al, 2010). NIRS has been applied to the analysis of inorganic elements concentration in sediment (Xia et al, 2007;Moros et al, 2008a), the characterisation of soil (Kooistra et al, 2001;Cozzolino & Mor on, 2003;Siebielec et al, 2004;Chodak et al, 2007;Moros et al, 2009;Cave et al, 2013), plant tissues (Font et al, 2004a;Huang et al, 2009;Cozzolino et al, 2011), water samples (Gonz alez-Mart ın et al, 2002Sheng et al, 2009;Chen et al, 2010;Li et al, 2011;Ning et al, 2012) and food (Font et al, 2004b(Font et al, , 2005Moros et al, 2008b;Wu et al, 2009). Although Kumagai et al (2003) in Japan used NIRS and canonical discriminant analysis (CDA) to discriminate the Cd content level (0.4 mg kg À1 ) of rice, the overall correct classification rate was 85.2% for 106 samples.…”