Authentication of the origin, variety and roasting degree of coffee samples by non-targeted HPLC-UV fingerprinting and chemometrics. Application to the detection and quantitation of adulterated coffee samples

Abstract

In this work, non-targeted approaches relying on HPLC-UV chromatographic fingerprints were evaluated to address coffee characterization, classification, and authentication by chemometrics. In general, HPLC-UV fingerprints were good chemical descriptors for the classification of coffee samples by PLS-DA according to their country of origin, even for nearby countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia. Good classification was also observed according to the coffee variety (Arabica vs. Robusta) and the coffee roasting degree. Sample classification rates higher than 89.3% and 91.7% were obtained in all the evaluated cases for the PLS-DA calibrations and predictions, respectively. Besides, the coffee adulteration studies carried out by PLSR, and based on coffees adulterated with other production regions or variety, demonstrated the good capability of the proposed methodology for the detection and quantitation of the adulterant levels down to 15%. Calibration, cross-validation and prediction errors below 2.9, 6.5, and 8.9%, respectively, were obtained for most of the evaluated cases.