Determining the geographical origin of Sechium edule fruits by multielement analysis and advanced chemometric techniques

This paper describes the determination and evaluation of the major and trace element composition (Al, As, Ba, Ca, Cd, Co, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na, Pb, Sr and Zn) of Sechium edule (Jacq) Swartz fruits collected from four different places of production in Corrientes province, Argentina. Element concentrations were determined by using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP OES) after microwave digestion. The accuracy was confirmed with standard reference material of spinach leaves (NIST, 1570a) and spiking tests. Principal component analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), k-nearest neighbors (kNN), partial least square-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and support vector machine (SVM) were applied to the results for discriminating the geographical origin of S. edule fruits. Finally, the LDA method was found to perform best with up to 90% accuracy rate based on the following elements: Ca, Ba, Cu, Mn, Na, Sr, and Zn.