title: Fructose and Pectin Detection in Fruit-Based Food Products by Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy.
abstract: Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) enables the investigation of samples with weak specific Raman signals, such as opaque samples, including fruit juices and pulp. In this paper, biological apple juices and apple/pear pulp have been studied in order to evidence the presence of fructose and pectin, which are components of great relevance for quality assessment of these kinds of products. In order to perform SERS measurements a low-cost home-made substrate consisting of a glass slide decorated with 30-nm-sized gold nanoparticles has been designed and used. By employing a conventional micro-Raman spectroscopy set-up and a suitable data treatment based on "wavelet" denoising algorithms and background subtraction, spectra of pectin and fructose with clear Raman features have been obtained. The results have confirmed the potential of SERS in the food industry for product characterization, also considering the low-cost and the relative ease of the fabrication process of the employed SERS substrate.
authors.affiliation: CNR-SPIN, Istituto Superconduttori, Materiali Innovativi e Dispositivi, 80078 Pozzuoli (Na), Italy. carlo.camerlingo@spin.cnr.it.
authors.forename: Carlo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Camerlingo
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale, Università della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", 80138 Naples, Italy. marianna.portaccio@unicampania.it.
authors.forename: Marianna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Portaccio
authors.affiliation: Institute of Genetics and Biophysics-ABT, CNR, 80131 Naples, Italy. rosarita.tate@igb.cnr.it.
authors.forename: Rosarita
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tatè
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale, Università della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", 80138 Naples, Italy. maria.lepore@unicampania.it.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lepore
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze Ecologiche e Biologiche, Università della Tuscia, 01100 Viterbo, Italy. delfino@unitus.it.
authors.forename: Ines
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Delfino
mesh_terms: D005504:Food Analysis; D005632:Fructose; D005638:Fruit; D006046:Gold; D053768:Metal Nanoparticles; D010368:Pectins; D013059:Spectrum Analysis, Raman
chemical_list: D005632:Fructose; D006046:Gold; D010368:Pectins
keywords: commercial fruit juice and fruit-based preparations; fructose; gold nanoparticles (GNPs); pectin; surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)