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True cinnamon (Cinnamon verum) is a high value spice only grown in Sri Lanka. It can often be adulterated with the lower priced Cinnamon cassia. This can have food safety implications because Cinnamon cassia contains high levels (1%) of coumarin, whereas true cinnamon has a minimal amount (0.04%) of coumarin. Coumarin is toxic to some animals and certain sensitive humans causing liver and kidney damage. Argentinian researchers have developed a rapid, low cost, non-destructive method based on NIR (Near-infrared diffuse reflectance) spectroscopy and chemometrics to detect the adulteration of true cinnamon.

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Because there is such a high worldwide demand for cinnamon spices, true cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum) powder is often adulterated with another inferior quality of cinnamon known as cassia cinnamon (Cinnamomum aromaticum). Korean researchers employed Fourier transform near-infrared (FT-NIR) and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopic analysis to determine the spectral differences in authentic and adulterated samples. Absorbance spectra of 195 samples of true, cassia and various adulterated samples (5-50% w/w adulterant) with 15 replicates for each sample  were collected. The partial least square regression (PLSR) models with spectral pre-processing methods were applied to predict the presence of cassia cinnamon in true cinnamon powder. The predictive value of FT-NIR data was greater than the FT-IR data. The study shows that FT-NIR and FT-IR spectroscopic techniques combined with multivariate analysis could be utilised as a controlled procedure or as an alternative rapid detection method to identify adulterated cinnamon powder.

 Read the abstract here