Authentication of Cereals and Cereal Products

Cereal grains are the basis for our most important foods; a large proportion of cultivated grains are milled and marketed as flour in order to produce breads, cakes, biscuits, and many other commodities. Both near-infrared (NIR) and mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy combined with multivariate data analysis (MVA) have been extensively used to measure chemical composition (eg, protein, moisture, and oil) in a wide number of grains including cereals and oilseeds, however, few reports can be found on the use of these methods and techniques for varietal discrimination and traceability. In this chapter an overview on applications of both NIR and MIR spectroscopy combined with MVA methods such as principal component analysis, partial least squares discriminant analysis, and linear discriminant analysis to aid the authentication and traceability of cereals are presented and discussed.