Rapid Authentication of 100% Italian Durum Wheat Pasta by FT-NIR Spectroscopy Combined with Chemometric Tools

Italy is the country with the largest durum wheat pasta production and consumption.The mandatory labelling for pasta indicating the country of origin of wheat has made consumers moreaware about the consumed pasta products and is influencing their choice towards 100% Italian wheatpasta. This aspect highlights the need to promote the use of domestic wheat as well as to develop rapidmethodologies for the authentication of pasta. A rapid, inexpensive, and easy-to-use method based oninfrared spectroscopy was developed and validated for authenticating pasta made with 100% Italiandurum wheat. The study was conducted on pasta marketed in Italy and made with durum wheatcultivated in Italy (n = 176 samples) and on pasta made with mixtures of wheat cultivated in Italyand/or abroad (n = 185 samples). Pasta samples were analyzed by Fourier transform-near infrared(FT-NIR) spectroscopy coupled with supervised classification models. The good performance resultsof the validation set (sensitivity of 95%, specificity and accuracy of 94%) obtained using principalcomponent-linear discriminant analysis (PC-LDA) clearly demonstrated the high prediction capabilityof this method and its suitability for authenticating 100% Italian durum wheat pasta. This output isof great interest for both producers of Italian pasta pointing toward authentication purposes of theirproducts and consumer associations aimed to preserve and promote the typicity of Italian products.