The Employment of FTIR Spectroscopy and Chemometrics for Classification and Quantification of Mutton Fat in Cod Liver Oil

In pharmaceutical field, Cod Liver Oil (CLO) is one of the potential sources of long chain omega-3 fatty acids and fat soluble vitamins, especially vitamin A. In the fats and oils industry, CLO has high price. As a consequence, some market players try to blind CLO with other fats and oils to gain economics profit. Animal fats like Mutton Fat (MF) are potential to be mixed with CLO due to the similarity in terms of fatty acid composition. This study focused on the application of FTIR spectroscopy in conjunction with chemometrics for classification and quantification of MF as adulterant in CLO. The combined spectral regions of 3,010-2995 and 1,500-900 cm-1 were used for classification between CLO and CLO blended with MF at various concentrations, with the aid of Discriminant Analysis (DA). DA is able to classify CLO and CLO adulterated with MF without any mistakenly grouped. These frequency regions were also used for quantification of MF in CLO, offering the highest R2 value (0.992) and the lowest root mean square error of calibration (RMSEC) value (1.31% v/v), compared with other studied spectral regions.