Tracing the geographical origin of tobacco at two spatial scales by stable isotope and element analyses with chemometrics

Lili Cui; Huan Chen; Yuwei Yuan; Fengpeng Zhu; Jing Nie; Shulei Han; Ya'ning Fu; Hongwei Hou; Qingyuan Hu; Zengping Chen

doi:10.1016/j.fochx.2023.100716

Tracing the geographical origin of tobacco at two spatial scales by stable isotope and element analyses with chemometrics

Food Chem X. 2023 May 18:18:100716. doi: 10.1016/j.fochx.2023.100716. eCollection 2023 Jun 30.

Authors

Lili Cui^{1

2

3}, Huan Chen^{1

2}, Yuwei Yuan^{4

5}, Fengpeng Zhu¹, Jing Nie^{4

5}, Shulei Han^{1

2}, Ya'ning Fu^{1

2}, Hongwei Hou^{1

2}, Qingyuan Hu^{1

2}, Zengping Chen³

Affiliations

¹ China National Tobacco Quality Supervision and Test Center, Key Laboratory of Tobacco Biological Effects, Zhengzhou 450001, China.
² Beijing Life Science Academy, Key Laboratory of Tobacco Biological Effects and Biosynthesis, Beijing 100101, China.
³ State Key Laboratory for Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China.
⁴ Institute of Agro-product Safety and Nutrition, Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou 310021, China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Information Traceability for Agricultural Products, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China, Hangzhou 310021, China.

Abstract

Tobacco is a widely cultivated cash crop, but it is often smuggled and sold illegally. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to verify the origin of tobacco in China. In an effort to address this issue, we conducted a study using stable isotopes and elements from 176 tobacco samples at both provincial and municipal scales. Our findings revealed significant differences in δ¹³C, K, Cs, and ^208/206Pb at the provincial-level, and Sr, Se, and Pb at the municipal level. We created a heat map at the municipal level, which showed a similar cluster classification to geographic grouping and provided an initial assessment of tobacco origins. Using OPLS-DA modeling, we achieved a 98.3% accuracy rate for the provincial scale and 97.6% for the municipal scale. It is worth noting that the importance of rankings of variables varied depending on the spatial scale of the evaluation. This study offers the first traceability fingerprint dataset of tobacco and has the potential to combat mislabeling and fraudulent conduct by identifying the geographical origin of tobacco.

Keywords: Elements; Geographical origin; OPLS-DA modeling; Stable isotopes; Tobacco.