Miniaturized NIR spectroscopy and chemometrics: A smart combination to solve food authentication challenges

Over the years, technology has allowed more accurate, more effective, and prompt food integrity assessments to assure the quality and authenticity of food material. Thanks to the development of portable and hand-held near infrared (NIR) as a rapid, reliable, non-destructive, and user-friendly instrument, on-site food analysis is provided with more feasibility. However, miniaturized NIR devices have some significant challenges due to the presence of varying noise resources which can lead to misinterpretation. In this context, chemometric methods with the capability of resolution, identification, classification, and calibration play a pivotal role in achieving precise and in-depth comprehension of the data. In the present mini-review, we will discuss miniaturized NIR instrumentation, some chemometric concepts, and introduce the most popular algorithm in food authentication problem. The main feature of this review is avoiding mathematical details as much as possible to make the material accessible to a broad audience but highlighting the key features of chemometric methods with some simple illustrative examples in the scope of food authenticity.