Journal of Analytical Methods in Chemistry
Volume 2016, Article ID 7482620, 7 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/7482620
Authentication of Coffea arabica according to Triacylglycerol Stereospecific Composition
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Section of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Perugia, Via San Costanzo, 06126 Perugia, Italy
Received 17 May 2016; Accepted 3 July 2016
Academic Editor: Boryana M. Nikolova-Damyanova
Copyright © 2016 L. Cossignani et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Stereospecific analysis is an important tool for the characterization of lipid fraction of food products. In the present research, an approach to characterize arabica and robusta varieties by structural analysis of the triacylglycerol (TAG) fraction is reported. The lipids were Soxhlet extracted from ground roasted coffee beans with petroleum ether, and the fatty acids (FA) were determined as their corresponding methyl esters. The results of a chemical-enzymatic-chromatographic method were elaborated by a chemometric procedure, Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). According to the total and intrapositional FA composition of TAG fraction, the obtained results were able to characterize roasted pure coffee samples and coffee mixtures with 10% robusta coffee added to arabica coffee. Totally correct classified samples were obtained when the TAG stereospecific results of the considered coffee mixture (90 : 10 arabica/robusta) were elaborated by LDA procedure.