Ricerc@Sapienza

Featured Application This review will offer a global overview of the chemometric approaches most commonly used in the field of spectroscopy-based food analysis and authentication. Three different scenarios will be surveyed: data exploration, calibration and classification. Basic and simple descriptions of the main multivariate techniques exploited in such a domain along with a comprehensive outline of their most recent and interesting applications will be provided.

Modern analytical measurement technologies, such as infrared, NMR, mass spectrometry and chromatography, provide a wealth of information on the chemical composition of all kinds of samples. These instruments are invariably controlled by computers, and the data (spectrum, chromatogram) recorded in digital form. A measurement on a single sample typically comprises thousands of numbers. Usually, this is many more than the number of samples, meaning that the experiment overall is underdetermined.