exploratory analysis applied for the evaluation of yerba mate adulteration (ilex paraguariensis)

Attenuated total reflectance fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (atr-ftir) was used to evaluate the potential to detect different sucrose concentrations added as adulterants in yerba mate (ilex paraguariensis). for this purpose, the data acquired from 15 yerba mate samples were analyzed by hierarchical cluster analysis (hca) and principal component analysis (pca). sucrose solutions from 5 to 30% of the total yerba quantity were added to each sample and analyzed in conjunction with the raw yerba mate sample. the fingerprint region (1300–800 cm−1) was extracted from the resulted spectra, smoothed by the savitzky golay method, normalized, average spectra of the triplicates and first derivative. discrimination between the different sucrose concentrations in the samples was achieved by the exploratory analysis, demonstrating a sucrose concentration gradient in the pc1 × pc2 score plot. in this way, the results suggest a potential industrial use of atr-ftir alongside with chemometrics to avoid a frequent sugar adulteration in a simple, fast, and reliable methodology.