Chemometric Techniques for Evaluating the Results of Trace Analysis

5 Chemometric Techniques for Evaluating the Results of Trace Analysis 

Chemometrics is a branch of science and technology dealing with the extraction of useful information from multidimensional measurement data using statistics and mathematics. It is applied in numerous scientific disciplines, including the analysis of food [313-315]. The most common techniques applied to multidimensional analysis include principal components analysis (PCA), factor analysis (FA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), canonical discriminant function analysis (DA), cluster analysis (CA) and artificial neurone networks (ANN). 

Multidimensional techniques are regularly used in analytical assessments of measurement data relating to the levels of chemical elements in the quality control of animal and plant food products. Chemometric interpretations have been obtained for the following animal products meat and meat products [316-318], fish [319-321], seafood [25, 322-328], milk and dairy products [329-332] and honey [333-339]. Similar interpretations have been obtained for the following plant products rice [143], cereals [340], vegetables [140, 341-346], fruit and fruit preserves [347], tea [155, 348-350], coffee [13, 155, 351, 352], mushrooms [26], fruit juices [141], confectionery [21, 353], nuts [354], wine [355-358], beer [66, 359] and other alcoholic beverages [159, 360, 361]. 

Armed with a knowledge of the mineral composition of animal and plant foods, one can establish their differentiation with respect to geographical provenance, biological genus and species, as well as the degree of processing. 

Nabrzyski, M. Functional role of some minerals in foods. In Szefer, P., Nriagu, J.O. (eds.) Mineral Components in Foods, pp. 363-388. CRC PressATaylor Francis Group, Fondon/New York (2007) 

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