Tracing the geographical origin of burdock root based on fluorescent components using multi-way chemometrics techniques

Tracing the geographical origin of burdock root based on fluorescent components using multi-way chemometrics techniques were investigated in this work. Excitation emission spectra were obtained for 150 burdock root of different geographical origins by recording emission from 270 to 510 nm with excitation in the range of 250–500 nm. Multi-way principal components analysis (M-PCA), Multi-way partial least squares discriminant analysis (N-PLS-DA) and Parallel factor analysis coupling with partial least squares discriminant analysis (PARAFAC-PLS-DA) methods were used to decompose the excitation-emission matrices (EEM) datasets and classify the different burdock roots according to their geographical origins. M-PCA model showed the clustering tendency for the different geographical origin of burdock root samples. N-PLS-DA and PARAFAC-PLS-DA gave more detailed classification results. The accuracy of successful in prediction of the geographical origin of the 150 samples varied between 77.8% and 100% for N-PLS-DA model. For PARFAC-PLS-DA model, the accuracy of the 150 samples varied between 94.7% and 100%. Different figures of merit were used for comparing the classification ability of N-PLS-DA and PARAFAC-PLS-DA model. Comparing with the other two methods, the PARAFAC-PLS-DA classification model, constructed from PARAFAC model scores, got more accurate and reliable classification result. The result showed this method could be applied to trace the geographical origins of burdock root. Further, considering the relative concentration can be acquired by PARAFAC model, the interest of this model emerges from the fact that it maybe be promising to be used to distinguish the quality grade level of the burdock root samples.