Characterization of cereal flours by fluorescence spectroscopy coupled with PARAFAC

Lea Lenhardt; Ivana Zeković; Tatjana Dramićanin; Bojana Milićević; Jovana Burojević; Miroslav D Dramićanin

doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2017.02.070

Characterization of cereal flours by fluorescence spectroscopy coupled with PARAFAC

Food Chem. 2017 Aug 15:229:165-171. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2017.02.070. Epub 2017 Feb 15.

Authors

Lea Lenhardt¹, Ivana Zeković¹, Tatjana Dramićanin¹, Bojana Milićević¹, Jovana Burojević¹, Miroslav D Dramićanin²

Affiliations

¹ University of Belgrade, Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences, P.O. Box 522, 11001 Belgrade, Serbia.
² University of Belgrade, Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences, P.O. Box 522, 11001 Belgrade, Serbia. Electronic address: dramican@vinca.rs.

PMID: 28372160
DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2017.02.070

Abstract

This paper presents parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) of fluorescence of cereal flours. Excitation-emission matrices (EEM's) of different cereal flours (wheat, corn, rye, rice, oat, spelt, barley and buckwheat) were measured in a front-face configuration over the ultraviolet-visible spectral range. EEM's showed that flours strongly fluoresce in two spectral regions, where amino acids, tocopherols, pyridoxine and 4-aminobenzoic acid show intense emissions. 4-component PARAFAC was used to model flour fluorescence and to decompose EEM's into excitation and emission spectra of each component. PARAFAC also provided relative concentrations of these components. The largest differences between flours were found in the concentration levels of the first and third component. Finally, variations in concentrations of PARAFAC modelled components were analysed in relation to the botanical origin of flour samples.

Keywords: Cereals; Flour; Fluorescence; PARAFAC.

MeSH terms

Edible Grain / chemistry*
Flour / analysis*
Spectrometry, Fluorescence / methods*