ABSTRACT
Nuts are widely consumed around the world and are well known for their good health effects, which are mostly derived from several substances found in their chemical composition (such as unsaturated fatty acids, polyphenols and tocopherols). However, food fraud tactics have increased in recent years, affecting a wide range of commodities. Beyond the economic deceit, the fraud in the case of nuts poses a risk to human health due to their allergic qualities. Chromatography-based techniques have developed as reliable analytical tools in this line, including both targeted (profiling) and non-targeted (fingerprinting) approaches, as well as other spectroscopic techniques. The massive amount of data collected in this manner is processed using chemometric methods to perform exploratory sample characterizations, detect adulterated items and quantify adulteration percentages. This chapter provides various sections on techniques reported in literature to measure marker compounds of nuts for identification of geographical origin and the statistical protocols to find underlying patterns.
