This study uses Raman and IR spectroscopic methods for the detection of adulterants in marine oils. These techniques are used individually and as low-level fused spectroscopic data sets. We used cod liver oil (CLO) and salmon oil (SO) as the valuable marine oils mixed with common adulterants, such as palm oil (PO), omega-3 concentrates in ethyl ester form (O3C), and generic fish oil (FO). We showed that support vector machines (SVM) can classify the adulterant present in both CLO and SO samples. Furthermore, partial least squares regression (PLSR) may be used to quantify the adulterants present. For example, PO and O3C adulterated samples could be detected with a RMSEP value less than 4%. However, the FO adulterant was more difficult to quantify because of its compositional similarity to CLO and SO. In general, data fusion improved the RMSEP for PO and O3C detection. This shows that Raman and IR spectroscopy can be used in concert to provide a useful analytical test for common adulterants in CLO and SO.
Keywords: Raman spectroscopy; adulteration; infrared spectroscopy; marine oils; partial least squares regression.