Rapid and Green Method Forensic Authentication of Rice Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS)

Rice is one of the most consumed cereals in the world. Currently, techniques for the authentication and geographical origin of rice is known not to be objective because to depend on the naked eye of a well-trained inspector. DNA fingerprint methods have been shown to be inappropriate for on-site application because the method needs a lot of labor and skilled expertise. Rice consumers want to confirm cultivation origin because they believe price or eating score has a high correlation according to them. Considering rice as a raw material of economic and social value and the recent use of NIR spectroscopy coupled with chemometric methods to authentication and discrimination of geographical origin as an alternative to classical methods in the search for a methodology in line with Green Chemistry, this work investigates the potential of NIR spectroscopy combined with multivariate analysis: PCA (Principal Component Analysis) and HCA (Hierarchical Cluster Analysis) for rapid and non-destructive forensic authentication of rice grains from Brazil and Venezuela. This study investigated the potential of near-infrared spectroscopy, combined with PCA and HCA chemometric technique to the authenticity of rice. It was verified that is feasible and advantageous to implement authenticity detection of different brands, typology and geographical discrimination (Brazil and Venezuela) rice.