Spectrofluorimetric determination of chlorophylls and pheopigments using parallel factor analysis

In this study, parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) was applied to fluorescence excitation emission matrices (EEM) of chlorophylls and pheopigments dissolved in acetone:water (9:1). The excitation wavelength range was from 350 to 500 nm and the emission was recorded from 600 to 730 nm. Nine standards, comprising mixtures of six analytes, were decomposed into a six-component PARAFAC model. Each component resembled the corresponding EEM of the pure analyte, demonstrating the uniqueness properties of PARAFAC. The score matrix obtained from the model was used for calibration and prediction of an independent set of standards and for eleven samples collected in the Baltic proper. The results obtained by the proposed method were compared to classical least squares (CLS) and to predictions by reference methods (HPLC and visible spectroscopy). For the independent set of standards the proposed method and CLS performed equal well in terms of predictive ability. But for the samples the proposed method yielded results that were in good agreement to the reference methods, whereas CLS failed. Also the so-called “second-order advantage” was examined, showing that not all constituents must be included in the calibration set. The concentration range was for chlorophyll a varied between 10 and 75 μg l−1, and similar for the other analytes.