Fruit juice analysis

Our nutritional awareness is changing and a healthy and balanced focus with plenty of fruits and vegetables is becoming more and more important. The juice industry is also benefiting from this, with steady growth in both developing and industrialized countries. In addition to the breakfast classic orange juice, which is still the most popular and most consumed fruit juice globally, red berry juices in particular have enjoyed high popularity in recent years. However, these juices are very expensive, which entails a higher risk of adulteration. 

What many people don’t know – fruit juices are among the most frequently adulterated foods in Europe. Manipulation practices in the fruit juice industry include, for example, unauthorized dilution with water followed by disguise through the addition of sugar. The sweetness lost through dilution is simply artificially restored and the lower cost of goods saves costs. But that’s not all, there are no limits to the variety and complexity of adulteration techniques. Of course, such methods are anything but in the consumer’s interest, and affected juices must be reliably detected – preferably before they hit the shelves. To check the quality and authenticity of a wide variety of fruit juices, concentrates and purees quickly and cost-effectively, FoodQS offers both classic quality parameters as well as modern NMR screening (SGF Profiling™).

What is SGF Profiling™ using NMR?
  • SGF-Profiling™
    Our nutritional awareness is changing and a healthy and balanced focus with plenty of fruits and vegetables is becoming more and more important. The juice industry is also benefiting from this, with steady growth in both developing and industrialized countries. In addition to the breakfast classic orange juice, which is still the most popular and most consumed fruit juice globally, red berry juices in particular have enjoyed high popularity in recent years. However, these juices are very expensive, which entails a higher risk of adulteration.

    What many people don’t know – fruit juices are among the most frequently adulterated foods in Europe. Manipulation practices in the fruit juice industry include, for example, unauthorized dilution with water followed by disguise through the addition of sugar. The sweetness lost through dilution is simply artificially restored and the lower cost of goods saves costs. But that’s not all, there are no limits to the variety and complexity of adulteration techniques. Of course, such methods are anything but in the consumer’s interest, and affected juices must be reliably detected – preferably before they hit the shelves.

    In order to check the quality and authenticity of a wide variety of fruit juices, concentrates and purees quickly and cost-effectively, FoodQS offers a modern and comprehensive nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR)-based analysis at its Bayreuth site – known as SGF Profiling™. As a screening method, it has a decisive advantage over classical analytical techniques – many analytical parameters can be recorded with a single measurement. This means that both comparatively simple and very complex questions can be addressed.

 

  • SGF Profiling™ includes for routine quality control:

    • Identification and quantification of numerous juice constituents (sugars, amino acids, organic acids).
    • Markers for spoilage and processing steps
    • Detection of unknown deviations

At the same time, based on a database of now more than 49,000 authentic reference samples, statistical classifications are made with respect to:

  • Product type (direct juice, fruit juice concentrate, juice from concentrate).
  • Fruit variety
  • Geographical origin

are carried out.

Furthermore, the signals in the NMR spectrum are used for fruit content estimation.


 

Figure: Exemplary excerpt of a laboratory report – the raspberry juice concentrate examined here is atypical according to the multivariate statistics. That is, numerous areas of the NMR spectrum do not match the reference data (the red star is not inside the green area). However, caution is advised! – there can be many reasons for the detected deviations. In the next step, the experts at the FoodQS GmbH NMR Competence Center in Bayreuth will investigate this first hint. They will examine the finding and then assess whether it is indeed an adulterated sample.

 

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