Recent Research Advancements of Coffee Quality Detection: Targeted Analyses vs. Nontargeted Fingerprinting and Related Issues

Abstract

Coffee is an important commercial product that arose various quality issues. Different techniques have been applied to detect coffee quality. This review focused on the recent updates in the detection methods of coffee from a targeted versus nontargeted perspective. This review introduced case studies of the current research progresses on targeted and nontargeted detection approaches. Their merits and demerits were evaluated as an analysis of coffee quality. The targeted approach, including liquid chromatography (LC), gas chromatography (GC), thin-layer chromatography (TLC), and capillary electrophoresis (CE), evaluates the quality of coffee by specific markers, whereas the nontargeted approach tests whether the sample is abnormal, without prior knowledge of what caused the abnormality, usually coupled with chemometrics. The nontargeted techniques commonly involve LC, GC, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), infrared spectroscopy (IR), ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis), laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), and mass spectrometry (MS). This work may provide guidance for resolving most aspects of the quality problems in coffee, such as adulterant detection, species identification, and geographical origin discrimination.