Simultaneous identification of the wood types in aged cachaças and their adulterations with wood extracts using digital images and SPA-LDA

• Published in: Food chemistry 2019-02, Vol.273, p.77-84
• Main Authors: de Sousa Fernandes, David Douglas, de Almeida, Valber Elias, Fontes, Marcelo Marques, de Araújo, Mário César Ugulino, Véras, Germano, Diniz, Paulo Henrique Gonçalves Dias
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adulteration; Aging; Cachaça; Successive projections algorithm; Wood extracts; Wood types
• ISSN: 0308-8146; 1873-7072
• DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2018.02.035

[Display omitted] •Identification of different wood types used in the aging process of cachaças;•Adulterations with wood extracts under study.•An eco-friendly methodology based on digital images is proposed;•Classifications using PCA-LDA, PCA-QDA, KNN, PLS-DA, SPA-LDA and SPA-QDA.•SPA-LDA obtained the best results in terms of accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. Cachaça is a sugarcane-derived alcoholic spirit exclusively produced in Brazil. It can be aged in barrels made from different types of wood, similar to other distilled beverages. The choice of wood type promotes different effects on color, flavor, aroma and consequently the price of cachaça, favoring fraudulent activities. This paper proposes the simultaneous identification of different wood types in aged cachaças and their adulterations with wood extracts using a digital-image based methodology employing color histograms obtained from digital images associated with pattern recognition methods, without any sample preparation step. Linear Discriminant Analysis, coupled with Successive Projections Algorithm for variable selection (SPA-LDA), obtained the best results, reaching accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity rates higher than 90.0% in the test set. This can be a rapid and reliable tool to prevent fraudulent labeling; ensuring that what is on the label reflects the quality of aged cachaças, affording security to consumers and regulatory agencies.