Development of a Qualitative Near Infrared Screening Method for Quality Consistency Assessment of Virgin Sunflower Oil

Abstract

Near infrared spectroscopy offers advantages in the analysis of vegetable oils such as rapidity, relative cost-effectiveness, and usually no need for sample prep- aration. Virgin Sunflower oils were used as reference standards to develop spectra library for qualitative identification and validation of the method. This model was validated by correct classification method using positive and nega- tive control samples. Various market samples of virgin sunflower oil were purchased and compared with spectra library. The results of spectral analysis of reference library and market samples were correlated using Mahalanobis distance method. Analysis involved 22 market samples. When these samples were matched against calibration samples, 4 samples out of 22 which are about 18.2% were not matched by the reference model. These market samples had Mahalanobis distance values between 4.2 and 6.7, which are greater than maximum permissible value of 3. Some of adulterants mentioned were Korie oil and pumpkin seeds oil