Innovative non‐targeted liquid chromatography fingerprinting approach for authenticating tigernuts under PDO quality seal

Abstract Background Tigernut is a typical foodstuff from a specific region of Valencia (Spain) "L'Horta Nord", where it is commercialized under a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) Chufa de Valencia ("Valencia's tigernut"). PDO‐recognised tigernuts present unique characteristics associated with their particular production region. The increasing in their demand and, therefore, the expansion of its cultivation area has made necessary an exhaustive quality control to check the geographical origin and quality seal. Results In this work, a new multivariate analytical method capable of authenticating the PDO quality seal of tigernut samples was developed. For it, tigernut fat fraction was extracted under optimal conditions estimated applying the methodology of design of experiments. The analytical method combined fingerprinting methodology and chemometrics tools to observe the natural grouping of the samples using exploratory analysis method (PCA) and, to develop classification models (PLS‐DA) to discriminate between two samples categories: (i) PDO tigernuts; and (ii) NON‐PDO tigernuts. Conclusion The built PLS‐DA model demonstrates 100% accuracy, high sensitivity, and specificity revealing that tigernuts fat fraction can be applied to authenticate of the PDO quality seal. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.