Scientific Publications
Authentication of Saffron using 60 MHz 1H NMR spectroscopy
Food Chemistry
60 MHz proton NMR spectroscopy was used to analyse extracts from saffron spice and a range of potential adulterants and mixtures. Using a simple extraction procedure, good quality spectra are obtained which contain peaks from the characteristic metabolites picrocrocin and crocins, fatty acids and kaempferol. The spectra of samples from trusted suppliers were used to train one-class models by isolation forest and nearest neighbour methods. Applying these to spectra of samples purchased from the online marketplace, it was found that 7 out of 33 samples were highly anomalous. From comparison with the spectra of known mixtures and confirmatory spectral analysis using 600 MHz NMR, it is probable that these contain considerable amounts of foreign matter.
Food Chemistry
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