Geographical traceability of “Arròs de Valencia” rice grain based on mineral element composition

The geographical traceability of rice grain samples involves the use of analytical methodologies that allow their differentiation on the basis of the rice composition, thus confirming their authenticity. In this paper, trace element determination of rice samples by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES) has been addressed to achieve a complete geographical origin classification. Samples (107) from Spain including Valencia, Tarragona, Murcia and Extremadura, Japan, Brazil and India were employed as training set whereas the validation set was formed by 46 samples of the aforementioned geographical origins. Data were processed by linear discriminant analysis (LDA), using as analytical variable the concentration of 32 elements (Al, As, Ba, Bi, Cd, Ca, Cr, Co, Cu, Fe, Pb, Li, Mg, Mn, Mo, Ni, K, Se, Na, Sr, Tl, Ti, Zn, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Ho, Er and Yb), enabling a 91.30% of correct classification for the validation set.