Sunflower oil is one of the most consumed vegetable seed oils in the world, as it is a common ingredient of cooking recipes, as well as frying applications, however, it can also be adulterated with some other oils. Since these oils (used for adulteration) have similar chemical compositions, detection of sunflower oil adulteration is a big challenge. Therefore, a faster, non-destructive, and cost-effective method would be more beneficial especially for detection at the industrial level. As a rapid and non-destructive technique, Fourier Transform InfraRed (FTIR) spectroscopy, for example, has become a remarkable analytical tool in the study of edible oils. Also, sterol components are known as a good indicator of adulteration of sunflower oil and the other vegetable oils in the literature. In this study, we have prepared adulterated samples of sunflower oil with safflower oil together with 4 blank samples (A: sunflower oil, B: safflower oil, C: high oleic acid sunflower oil, D: high oleic acid safflower oil). For this purpose, varying amount of safflower oil samples were blended in sunflower oil samples according to the percentages: 2%, 4%, 6%, 8%, 10%, 14%, 18%, 22% and 26% by forming AB, BC, CD and AD adulteration groups. Thus, in each group, there were 9 adulterated samples. FTIR and sterol analysis (by GC) have been performed for all samples including the blank ones. Sterol analyses results were evaluated by Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The results of this study showed us that fast ATR-FTIR and sterol analyses have the potential in the detection of safflower adulteration in sunflower oil as a non-destructive and effective alternative method.
ANLI-006: Detection of Adulteration of Sunflower Oil with Safflower Oil Samples by ATR-FTIR and Sterol using PCA
