Spectrum Adulterant Screen

Increasing demand and high-market value of ingredients and food has led to numerous adulteration and fraudulent schemes which undermine the quality attributes and safety of food. Adulterant Screen offers simple method development with a powerful algorithm to ensure detection, identification, and estimation of concentration of materials which have been fraudulently or accidentally introduced into a product.

Adulterant Screen is the ideal solution for laboratories needing to test products to verify that they are the stated product, and that they are free from contamination or adulteration. There is no need for extensive software training or methods development. It is particularly useful for, but not limited to, the screening of:

• Olive oil
• Cocoa powder
• Spices
• Honey
• Maple syrup
• Coffee
• Liquid and powdered milk

The Spectrum 10 software is used to collect IR or NIR spectra representing “good samples” for a product. This consists of multiple spectra representing many sources of variation of the product, such as different batches, sources, grades of material, etc. These spectra define the boundaries of the acceptable product. Spectra of all known adulterants as pure materials are then collected, which define the Adulterant Spectra.

Key Features:

• Semi-quantitative estimate of adulterant concentration
• Pass/Fail limits can be set up based on the calculated concentration level of the adulterant
• Should a new adulterant arise, a single spectrum of pure adulterant is simply scanned, eliminating the need for extensive calibrations
• Easy to use, virtually no additional training is required
• Embedded in Spectrum 10 software, not as a separate software package allowing fast-tracked method development
• Can be incorporated within a Spectrum 10 Macro and Spectrum Touch method allowing a simple workflow from data collection through to a complete report

Accelerated Method Optimization

Adulterant Screen methods can be rapidly developed to detect and semi-quantitatively predict the level of adulterants. Quantitative predictions are based on the pure spectra of adulterants and, do not require the preparation of calibration standards and methods. A suite of pre-processing algorithms are included to assist with common sampling variability issues and improve method robustness, accounting for spectral baseline effects and spectral regions of poor signal to noise. Blank regions can be incorporated to exclude spectral regions that do not contribute useful information to the method.

Future-Proofing Analysis

Analysis is future-proofed, since new adulterants can be simply added by scanning a single spectrum of the pure adulterant and adding it to your existing list of adulterants. No lengthy recalibration is required. Adulterant Screen can be used on demand as a data processing command within Spectrum 10 software. It can also be easily incorporated into Spectrum 10 macros and Spectrum Touch methods to provide simple turnkey analyser operation with PerkinElmer IR and NIR systems. These methods can incorporate additional Spectrum Quant methods to quantify materials in the product if it passes the Adulterant Screen.