Food Control

Volume 139, September 2022, 109093

The detection and determination of

adulterants in turmeric using fourier-
transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy
coupled to chemometric analysis and micro-
FTIR imaging
Maeve Shannon a , Jean-Louis Lafeuille b, Aline Frégière-Salomon b, Stéphane Lefevre b,
Pamela Galvin-King a, Simon A. Haughey c, Duncan Thorburn Burns c, Xueqi Shen c, Arun Kapil d,
Terence F. McGrath a, Christopher T. Elliott c

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Highlights

• Turmeric powder can be adulterated with spent turmeric, flours and

starches.

• FTIR and micro FTIR-imaging are suitable methods to investigate

turmeric fraud.

• Survey of turmeric powder samples indicated 20% were atypical.

• Results from survey samples on FTIR and micro FTIR-imaging were

correlated.
Abstract

Like many herbs and spices, turmeric is at risk of fraud due to its high commercial value
and soaring consumer demand. Turmeric powder in particular is prone to adulteration;
therefore, fast and robust screening methods are required to detect this fraud. In the
present study, both Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) coupled with chemometric analysis
and micro-FTIR imaging have been successfully used to correctly identify authentic and
spiked samples of turmeric. In terms of performance, 100% of typical turmeric in the
validation set were predicted correctly. In relation to correct classification of the spiked
samples, 98.75% were classified correctly as atypical, against the 2-class and multiclass
models. For the micro-FTIR imaging method, selectivity was 0.94 for authentic samples
and ranged from 0.6 to 1 for spiked turmeric samples. A survey of commercial turmeric
samples was undertaken and the results from the FTIR analysis revealed that 20% of the
samples were atypical. Twenty survey samples, both typical and atypical, were sent to an
independent lab as part of a comparative study and the results demonstrated a good
correlation between the two spectroscopic methods, with 80% of the samples returning
the same result in both methods. The results demonstrate that spectroscopic methods
can be successfully used to identify adulterated turmeric powder. Additionally, the
results from the survey highlight the fraud problem in turmeric and demonstrate the
need for reliable, rapid and robust screening methods to tackle this problem.

Introduction

Turmeric (Curcuma longa L.), a rhizomatous herbaceous perennial plant, is a member of

the Zingiberacea family and is often called “Indian Saffron”. It originated in Southeast Asia
and has been in use over 6000 years (Nair, 2013). Currently it is in use for culinary,
medical and cosmetic purposes, because of its nutritional, organoleptic and
pharmaceutical properties. The medicinal uses include those as an antioxidant, anti-
inflammatory, anti-cancer and anti-Alzheimer's agent (Nelson et al., 2017). In 2018, it
was concluded that turmeric stood out for its effects among herbal medicines (Hosseini
& Hosseinzadeh, 2018), although its effects are, as yet, not clinically proven (Extance,
2019). In addition to its main uses it has found application for the visualization of latent
fingerprints (Garg et al., 2011).

Turmeric is classified as a natural food additive used to flavour and colour foods such as
pickles, mayonnaise, beverages, butter and is a principal ingredient in curry (Spices
Board India, 2015). India is the largest consumer, producer and exporter of turmeric;
turmeric production in India was over one million metric tons in 2021. In 2017, USA
consumers spent over $42M on turmeric food supplements, an increase of 47% from 2016
(Smith et al., 2019), indicating its increasing popularity.
The rapid growth in the market for turmeric has given a massive opportunity to food
criminals to gain profit through economically motivated adulteration (EMA). Whilst,
whole C. Longa roots are usually free from adulteration, turmeric powders are readily
adulterated. One of the first cases of turmeric adulteration, in the 1970's, was when C.
Longa was replaced by C. zedoaria and C. aromaticia due to their close resemblances and
ready availability (Bejar, 2018; Sen et al., 1974). Curcumin, (1E,6E)-1,7-bis(4-hydoxy-3-
methoxyphenyl)-1,6-heptadiene-3,5-dione, is responsible for the yellow colour of
turmeric and these levels vary depending on the specific variety of turmeric. Fraudsters
often see huge opportunity to adulterate powdered substances due to the fact they pass
through complex supply chains and adulteration can often go undetected. Substitution
with white starches in turmeric powder lowers curcumin content and depletes the
colour. Therefore, materials may be added to compensate for the colour loss (Dixit et al.,
2009). Many of the additions are toxic, for example, metanil yellow, Sodium (3-[4-
anilinophenyl) diazenyl] benzene sulphonate, (Dixit et al., 2009), lead chromate(Forsyth
et al., 2019) and Sudan dyes (Di Anibal et al., 2009).

Spectroscopic techniques such as near infrared (NIR) and Fourier transform infrared
(FTIR) have proved extremely successful in identifying fraudulent substances in herbs
and spices (Galvin-King et al., 2020, 2021; Kucharska-Ambrożej & Karpinska, 2020;
Lafeuille et al., 2020; Wilde et al., 2019). Spectroscopic data alone, does not necessarily
directly reveal anomalies, however, when coupled with chemometric modelling, it can be
powerful tool in the fight against fraud in the herb and spice industry. Chemometric
analysis of spectral data allows the extraction of information about similarities between
variables. Both supervised and unsupervised methods are used in chemometric analysis.
Principal component analysis (PCA), which is an unsupervised method, is often used
initially to identify differences using spectral data alone. Supervised methods, such as
partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and orthogonal partial least squares-
discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA), can be used to predict unknown samples against
known discriminatory clusters of authentic material and associated adulterants, using
class information (Kucharska-Ambrożej & Karpinska, 2020).

The combination of spectroscopy and chemometric analysis was previously used to

detect adulterants such as starches, flours, peanut butter powder, chalk and talc in garlic
powder. Data was collected using both NIR and FTIR and PCA plots for both showed good
separation of classes, which was then further improved by the use of an OPLS-DA model.
When an external validation set, containing both authentic garlic and spiked garlic
samples, was tested against the OPLS-DA model, there was 100% correct classification for
authentic garlic detection and spiked garlic detection in the range of 20–90% for both
FTIR and NIR (Galvin-King et al., 2021) which illustrates the effectiveness of using
spectroscopy and chemometrics in the detection of fraud in spices. Similarly, another
study using non-targeted fingerprinting in the detection of adulterated black pepper, also
revealed promising results, indicating the use of NIR and FTIR as a successful rapid
screening method for black pepper adulteration (Wilde et al., 2019). Recently a new non-
targeted method involving the combination of microscopy with Fourier Transform Mid
Infrared spectroscopy coupled with Attenuated Total Reflection (micro-ATR-FT-MIR)
were used to detect a broad range of endogenous and exogenous (organic and inorganic)
adulterants in black pepper. This hyphenated microscope was used in its imaging mode
along with chemometrics (PCA) based on 10 non-spectral variables. Sensitivity rate for
pinhead, talc, light berry spent, papaya obtained 1.0, while for rice flour and white berry
spent obtained 0.75 (Lafeuille et al., 2020).

Only a limited set of studies on the detection of economically motivated adulteration

(EMA) of turmeric using spectroscopy have been reported. A study in 2019, explored the
use of an FT-NIR spectroscopy method for quantifying added starch in turmeric (1–30%)
(w/w) and found the data demonstrated a strong relationship among the actual and
determined concentrations (Kar et al., 2019). Studies investigating the detection of added
colours, such as metanil yellow, to turmeric using spectroscopic methods such as Fourier
transform-raman (FT-Raman), FTIR and NIR (Dhakal et al., 2016; Kar et al., 2018). Kar et
al. (2018) carried out a study investigating the detection of metanil yellow in turmeric
powder (1–25%) (w/w), using NIR spectroscopy and two different regression models.
They concluded that the minimum concentration level that could be quantified using NIR
spectrometer with both regression models was approximately 0.3%, which was lower
than that for direct FT-Raman and FTIR (Kar et al., 2018).

The present study employs the use of FTIR and microscope-FTIR spectra, with
chemometrics, to detect adulteration of turmeric powder with a number of potential
adulterants. Additionally a survey of commercially available turmeric samples in the UK
was conducted to assess the current level of fraud in turmeric powder. The FTIR work
was carried out by Bia Analytical Ltd in the Institute for Global Food Security in QUB,
while the microscope-FTIR work was undertaken by the Global Quality and Food Safety
Centre of Excellence at McCormick & Co., Inc.

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Section snippets

Sample collection
A total of 458 typical turmeric samples were collected from reliable industry partners for
the development of chemometric models for turmeric authenticity. The suppliers
provided full traceability information on the authentic turmeric samples. The turmeric
samples collected covered a wide range of varieties including Madras (n = 263), Alleppey
(n = 24), Vizag (n = 15), Cuddapah (n = 19), Mydhukur (n = 15), Rajapuri (n = 15), Salem
(n = 32). Also, 75 samples of varying curcumin content, ranging

Data collection

Following measurement of the samples on the FTIR instrument, spectral data was
collected. Fig. 3. shows the raw spectral data for authentic turmeric and its possible
adulterants, including spent turmeric, rice flour, tapioca starch and cornflour. The
differences between the spectra are clearly evident, even when comparing the turmeric
spectra to the spent turmeric. Both the functional group region and the fingerprint
region were included in the analysis of turmeric and its potential

Conclusion

Foods that are high in commercial value and have complex supply chains, such as spices,
are often a target of fraud. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has further impacted the
vulnerability of the food supply chain. This means developing robust and rapid screening
tools for the detection of adulteration in spices is more vital now than before. The
present study demonstrates how FTIR and microscope FTIR can be used successfully to
detect adulteration in turmeric. Performance of FTIR method was high,

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Maeve Shannon: Conceptualization, of idea, Writing – original draft, Methodology,

Investigation, Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Jean-Louis Lafeuille:
Conceptualization, of idea, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Investigation, Writing –
review & editing, Formal analysis. Aline Frégière-Salomon: Methodology, Investigation,
Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Stéphane Lefevre: Methodology,
Investigation, Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Pamela Galvin-King:

Declaration of competing interest

There are no conflicts of interest.

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