Detection and quantification of adulteration in sandalwood oil through near infrared spectroscopy.

The confirmation of authenticity of essential oils and the detection of adulteration are problems of increasing importance in the perfumes, pharmaceutical, flavor and fragrance industries. This is especially true for 'value added' products like sandalwood oil. A methodical study is conducted here to demonstrate the potential use of Near Infrared (NIR) spectroscopy along with multivariate calibration models like principal component regression (PCR) and partial least square regression (PLSR) as rapid analytical techniques for the qualitative and quantitative determination of adulterants in sandalwood oil. After suitable pre-processing of the NIR raw spectral data, the models are built-up by cross-validation. The lowest Root Mean Square Error of Cross-Validation and Calibration (RMSECV and RMSEC % v/v) are used as a decision supporting system to fix the optimal number of factors. The coefficient of determination (R(2)) and the Root Mean Square Error of Prediction (RMSEP % v/v) in the prediction sets are used as the evaluation parameters (R(2) = 0.9999 and RMSEP = 0.01355). The overall result leads to the conclusion that NIR spectroscopy with chemometric techniques could be successfully used as a rapid, simple, instant and non-destructive method for the detection of adulterants, even 1% of the low-grade oils, in the high quality form of sandalwood oil.