“…Any substance which is added to the food to enhance its appearance and its addition to any foodstuff is not allowed by the authorities is termed illicit or illegal. SERS and Raman spectroscopies have been used in conjunction with multivariate calibration for detecting such illicit additives (Bedward et al., 2019; Chen et al., 2011; Cheng & Dong, 2011; Cheung et al., 2010; Dhakal et al., 2016; Di Anibal et al., 2012; Gao et al., 2015; Haughey et al., 2015; He et al., 2015; Hu & Lu, 2016; Hu et al., 2015; Karunathilaka et al., 2017; Karunathilaka et al., 2018; Lin et al., 2019; Lin et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2010; Monago‐Maraña et al., 2019; Ou et al., 2017; Ryder et al., 1999; Xiong et al., 2017). Melamine is deliberately introduced to increase the content of protein foodstuff and has been widely studied in foodstuffs among the illicit additives using SERS/Raman chemometrics approach (Cheng & Dong, 2011; Hu & Lu, 2016; Hu et al., 2015; Karunathilaka et al., 2017; Lin et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2010; Xiong et al., 2017).…”