Methods of cinnamon analysis

Abstract

The genus Cinnamomum has a few major species, Ceylon or Sri Lankan cinnamon (C. zeylanicum or C. verum), Chinese or common cinnamon (C. cassia), Indonesian cassia (C. burmanii), C. loureiroi (Saigon cinnamon or Vietnamese cassia), and the less common C. citriodorum (Malabar cinnamon) that are used to manufacture bark and powder available on the market. The cinnamon from Sri Lanka, also recognized as “true cinnamon” has a high market value, rendering it vulnerable to adulteration. For the distinction of the true cinnamon, the main analysis methods that can be employed involve chemical, biomolecular and isotopic methods. Chemical methods include the evaluation of the contents of chemical constituents along with instrumental fingerprints. The principal methods that are applied to achieve this goal include chromatographic (HPLC, GC), spectroscopic (NMR, IR, Raman) and elemental (ICP) techniques. Biomolecular methods are based on the composition of DNA or protein, mainly covering PCR-based methods, while isotopic methods involve the assessment of stable isotopes. To attain reliable outcomes from these methods, chemometric tools can be implemented in the collected data. In this chapter, we review the recent progress on analysis methods used to assess the authenticity of cinnamon.