1H NMR of bovine meat extracts combined with chemometrics as a tool to distinguish between irradiated and non-irradiated meat

The aim of this study was to assess the usefulness of NMR spectroscopy to differentiate irradiated from non-irradiated bovine meat. lH NMR spectra of methanolic extracts of ground beef irradiated at 0, 2.5, 4.5 and 8 kGy were acquired with a 600 MHz NMR spectrometer. The data set composed by integrated signals for each of 80 NMR spectra of bovine meat was statistically elaborated by multivariate analysis. The data suggest that 1H NMR coupled with chemometric is an efficient method to distinguish between non irradiated and irradiated beef samples and it could be proposed as a rapid screening method alternative to the high time consuming official methods.