Tracing the Geographical Origin of Lentils (Lens culinaris Medik.) by Infrared Spectroscopy and Chemometrics

The feasibility of applying the infrared spectroscopy for the geographical origin traceability of lentils from two different countries (Italy and Canada) was investigated. In particular, lentil samples were analyzed by Fourier transform near- and mid-infrared (FT-NIR and FT-MIR) spectroscopy and then discriminated by applying supervised models, i.e., linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). To avoid LDA overfitting, two variable strategies were adopted, i.e., a variable reduction by principal component analysis and a variable compression by wavelet packet transform algorithm. FT-MIR models were more discriminating compared to FT-NIR ones with prediction abilities ranging from 98 to 100% and from 91 to 100% for cross- and external validation, respectively. The combination of the FT-MIR and FT-NIR data did not improve the model performances. These findings demonstrated the suitability of the FT-MIR spectroscopy, in combination with supervised pattern recognition techniques, to successfully classify lentils according to their geographical origin.