Thermal desorption direct analysis in real-time high-resolution mass spectrometry and machine learning allow the rapid authentication of ground black pepper and dried oregano: A proof-of-concept study.

Thermal desorption direct analysis in real-time high-resolution mass spectrometry (TD-DART-HRMS) approaches have gained popularity for fast screening of a variety of samples. With rapid volatilization of the sample at increasing temperatures outside the mass spectrometer, this technique can provide a direct readout of the sample content with no sample preparation. In this study, TD-DART-HRMS's utility for establishing spice authenticity was examined. To this aim, we directly analyzed authentic (typical) and adulterated (atypical) samples of ground black pepper and dried oregano in positive and negative ion modes. We analyzed a set of authentic ground black pepper samples (n = 14) originating from Brazil, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Ecuador, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Cambodia, and adulterated samples (n = 25) consisting of mixtures of ground black pepper with this spice's nonfunctional by-products (pinheads or spent) or with different exogenous materials (olive kernel, green lentils, black mustard seeds, red beans, gypsum plaster, garlic, papaya seeds, chili, green aniseed, or coriander seeds). TD-DART-HRMS facilitated the capture of informative fingerprinting of authentic dried oregano (n = 12) originating from Albania, Turkey, and Italy and those spiked (n = 12) with increasing percentages of olive leaves, sumac, strawberry tree leaves, myrtle, and rock rose. A predictive LASSO classifier was built, after merging by low-level data fusion, the positive and negative datasets for ground black pepper. Fusing multimodal data allowed retrieval of more comprehensive information from both datasets. The resultant classifier achieved on the withheld test set accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of 100%, 75%, and 90%, respectively. On the contrary, the sole TD-(+)DART-HRMS spectra of the oregano samples allowed construction of a LASSO classifier that predicted the adulteration of the oregano with excellent statistical indicators. This classifier achieved, on the withheld test set, 100% each for accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity.