Identification of species of the Euterpe genus by rare earth elements using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and linear discriminant analysis

•Açaí and juçara are similar fruits with antioxidant capacity.•PCA results show that Nd, Th and Sm tended to direct to a part of the açaí fruit.•LDA-7 differentiated correctly between species with a predictive ability of 83.3%.•When all REEs are used, the ability to differentiate fruits decrease to 66.7%.