Paprika production under the protected designation of origin (PDO) standardized procedures leads to more quality products. However, it is also related to higher retail prices, making them susceptible to adulteration with low-quality paprika or its agricultural origin's mislabeling. Therefore, in this study, high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (HPLC-FLD) fingerprints, strongly related to phenolic acid and polyphenolic compounds, were proposed as chemical markers to assess the classification of paprika from five European regions (three Spanish PDO, Hungary, and the Czech Republic), through a classification decision tree constructed by partial least squares regression-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) models. After external validation, an excellent classification accuracy of 97.9% was achieved. Moreover, the chromatographic fingerprints were also proposed to detect and quantitate two different paprika geographical origin blend scenarios by partial least squares (PLS) regression. Low external validation and prediction errors -with values below 1.6 and 10.7%, respectively- were obtained.
Keywords: Chemometrics; Fingerprinting; Food Authentication; HPLC-FLD; Paprika; Protected Designation of Origin.
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