Rapid and nondestructive determination of sesamin and sesamolin in Chinese sesames by near-infrared spectroscopy coupling with chemometric method.

Sesame was one of the most important crops in Africa and east Asia. The sesamin and sesamolin in sesames have shown various pharmacological, biological and physiologic activities. In this study, a rapid and nondestructive method for determination of sesamin and sesamolin in Chinese sesames by near-infrared spectroscopy coupled with chemometric method was proposed. The near infrared spectra of sesame samples from three different Chinese areas were collected and the partial least squares (PLS) was used to construct the quantitative models. The spectral preprocessing and variable selection methods were adopted to improve the predictability and stability of the model. Reasonable quantitative results can be obtained when the samples used for model construction and prediction were harvested in same years. For sesamin and sesamolin, the correlation coefficient (R) and root mean square error prediction (RMSEP) were 0.9754, 0.9636 and 151.2951, 39.7720, respectively. The optimized models seem less effective when they were used to predict the samples harvested in other years or countries. However, acceptable results can still be obtained.