Chemometrics for Food Quality Control and Authentication

Contemporary societal concerns about food include aspects lined to nutrition, health, safety, quality, sustainability, tradition and marketing. Moreover, globalization of food markets, and regulatory frameworks such as those of the European Union have
reshaped paradigms in food science and industry priorities.
Quality remains a primary criterion for market access, yet it is a multifaceted concept encompassing both measurable product attributes and notions of accountability and trust. It reflects intentionally introduced characteristics (e.g., processing sophistication,
potential adulteration, appearance), unintentional factors (e.g., purity, contamination, degradation), and subjective consumer perceptions linked to terroir, authenticity, origin, and production practices.
Accordingly, quality control and authentication must extend beyond traditional chemical analyses focused on single constituents toward comprehensive fingerprinting and rapid, nondestructive techniques. In this context, chemometrics plays a central role by enabling efficient extraction of relevant information and providing tools for exploratory analysis, visualization, model validation, and effective data management.
The aim of this lecture will be framing the chemometrics strategy with particular concern posed on which chemometrics tools are to be used and on their correct use.