Detection and quantitation of adulteration in flour and pasta by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography combined with chemometrics

Reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) was utilized to distinguish between durum and common wheat varieties from Turkey (TR) and the United States (U.S.) using partial least squaresdiscriminant analysis. The root mean squared error values of prediction were 0.172 and 0.040 for TR and U. S. samples. Graphical analysis showed a strong link between wheat origin and clustering. These results indicate that RP-HPLC separates effectively various wheat samples into distinct categories. This study also aimed to detect and quantify common wheat in blended flour and farina in pasta from TR and U.S. using partial least square regression. The coefficients of determination of predicting adulteration were 0.895 and 0.997 for flour samples and were 0.992 and 0.985 for pasta samples of TR and U.S, respectively. RP-HPLC combined with chemometrics is a robust tool for detecting and quantifying adulteration in blended flour and pasta samples, as well as distinguishing between durum and common wheat.