A review of analytical techniques coupled with chemometric methods for tobacco origin traceability

Abstract

Tobacco holds significant economic value and medicinal potential, but illegal trade and counterfeit products pose major barriers to its sustainable development. Tobacco origin traceability technologies offer practical solutions by ensuring product authenticity and quality assurance. Despite the emergence of new technologies, a systematic review of tobacco origin traceability remains lacking. This paper presents the first systematic summary of organic compound fingerprints, mineral element fingerprints, and isotope fingerprints, detailing their respective advantages and limitations. Chemometric methods are introduced, and their integration with these three traceability techniques for tobacco origin identification is discussed. Furthermore, research gaps in blockchain-IoT integration, omics technologies, and spectroscopic techniques are highlighted, with potential integrations with tobacco traceability systems proposed. This review demonstrates that technology integration significantly enhances the accuracy of traceability, offering comprehensive insights into the geographic origin of tobacco.