Detection of ground roasted coffee adulteration with roasted soybean and wheat

- Admixtures of soy/wheat in ground roasted coffee were evaluated by simplex-centroid.
- Carbohydrate contents discriminate genuine coffee from adulterants by HPLC, PCA, and LDA.
- Pure coffee presented higher levels of galactose and mannose.
- Pure soybean was distinguished by fructose.
- Pure wheat presents high glucose with some xylose as characteristic carbohydrates.

Coffee as high-price commodity is quite vulnerable to adulteration by cheaper roasted grains. Frauds are conventionally detected by microscopy; however, this technique is limited semi-quantitative assays that require training and skilled analysts. In this regard, carbohydrates as major macronutrients of grains can be used as chemical markers to qualitatively and quantitatively assess coffee authenticity. Although, some tamper's studies have already been reported, this paper approaches on new analytical resources for detection of ground roasted coffee adulteration, applying roasted soybean and wheat as sources of fraud. The characterization of the pure roasted coffee beans and of adulterations profiles was taken by total carbohydrates validated method based on high-performance anion-exchange chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection. The influence of each matrix was evaluated employing the simplex-centroid design for experiments with mixtures thus relating the mixing ratio with each monosaccharide by response surface. The proposed models were effective in recognition and prediction of different mixture proportions, thereby allowing the distinction of genuine coffee by principal component analysis and linear discriminant analysis. Predominantly, pure roasted coffee presented higher levels of galactose and mannose. Glucose can be considered as a marker for wheat adulteration and fructose for soybean, respectively. These results correspond to polysaccharides of pure raw grains, confirming this approach as a feasible analytical tool for detection of adulterants in ground roasted coffee.