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Among many adulteration practices, doping/spiking spices with dyes to mimic their vibrant colours is quite common. Colorants have no nutritional value, their addition often masks defects in spices, and/or are added to enhance their appearance. Many synthetic dyes such as metanil yellow, sudan red, and lead chromate are mutagenic, carcinogenic, induce chromosomal abnormalities and may cause severe health issues of great concern to consumers and the food industry. These dyes are making their way into food products due to lack of strict regulatory guidelines and analytical testing capabilities, warranting highly sensitive and accurate analytical techniques. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has gained prominence in recent years as an analytical tool for botanical metabolomics. This technique is highly reproducible, accurate, and sensitive, with easy operation and simple sample preparation, making it an ideal choice for identifying synthetic dyes in botanical products. The metabolites constituting botanical products are species-specific and yield distinctive NMR spectroscopic profiles, making NMR-based metabolomics an attractive and traceable approach for botanical identification. A conjoint spectral data analysis captures the presence of dyes in the product, thus allowing for simultaneous species identification and quality assessment. NMR spectroscopy, combined with multivariate statistical analysis, enables the creation of spectral libraries containing both authentic materials and those with added dyes, facilitating rapid and reliable product authentication and quality verification. This approach is demonstrated through various cases of spice adulteration with different dyes, showcasing how NMR-based methods effectively detect adulteration and verify label claims with precision.
