Geographic authentication of argentinian teas by combining one-class models and discriminant methods for modeling near infrared spectra

In this study, 110 tea samples from South American countries (Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay) and Asian countries (India and China) were analyzed using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) together with a two-step chemometric authentication strategy (class modeling techniques and discriminant analysis) to authenticate commercial teas from Argentina. In the first step, one-class models were built and validated to authenticate South American teas using preprocessed NIRS data. For this purpose, data-driven soft independent modeling of class analogy (DD-SIMCA) and one-class partial least squares (OC-PLS) were used. The DD-SIMCA model gave the best results, with a sensitivity of 93.10%, specificity of 100%, and efficiency of 95.00%. In the second step, a support vector machine (SVM) was used to build and validate a multiclass model to discriminate between tea samples from Argentina and neighboring countries of South America. The best model was the combination of nine variables selected by the fast correlation-based filter (FCBF) method, with an accuracy of 98.30%. Therefore, we conclude that the combination of NIRS and two-step chemometric tools can be used to authenticate the geographical origin of samples with high inter-class similarity.