Detection of irradiated beef by nuclear magnetic resonance lipid profiling combined with chemometric techniques

The combination of 1H NMR lipid profiling with multivariate analysis was applied to differentiate irradiated and non-irradiated beef. Two pattern recognition chemometric procedures, stepwise linear discriminant analysis (sLDA) and artificial neural networks (ANNs), provided a successful discrimination between the groups investigated. sLDA allowed the classification of 100% of the samples into irradiated or non-irradiated beef groups; the same result was obtained by ANNs using the 1 kGy irradiation dose as discriminant value suggested by the network. Furthermore, sLDA allowed the classification of 81.9% of the beef samples according to the irradiation dose (0, 2.5, 4.5 and 8 kGy). 1H NMR lipid profiling, coupled with multivariate analysis may be considered a suitable and promising screening tool for the rapid detection of irradiated meat in official control of food.

► New techniques to detect the irradiation treatment of foods could be helpful. ► 1H NMR lipid profiling may be considered a promising tool to detect irradiated beef. ► This approach could be developed as a procedure for the official control of food.