Making Cocoa Origin Traceable

Abstract

Nowadays, consumers have become aware of different cocoa genotypes and their origins, which caused an expanding market of premium chocolates with single-origin cocoa beans. Due to the high demand for superior quality products, cocoa beans may be subjected to adulteration. For accurate discrimination of the cocoa beans, three major analytical approaches can be implemented: (i) chemical approaches, (ii) biomolecular approaches, and (iii) isotopic approaches. Chemical procedures involve the determination of contents of chemical species and component profile as well as instrumental fingerprints. The principal instruments that are utilized for this purpose include high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC), gas chromatography (GC), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and inductively coupled plasma (ICP). Biomolecular approaches are based on the DNA or protein composition, whereas isotopic methods involve measuring the stable isotopic composition of individual atoms using isotope-ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS). In order to achieve reliable results from these approaches, multivariate statistical analysis may be applied to the obtained data. In this chapter, the recent literature on traceability of cocoa origin is reviewed, and the three analytical approaches, including chemical, biomolecular and isotropic methods, are discussed in detail.