Chemical Composition, Sensory Properties, Provenance, and Bioactivity of Fruit Juices as Assessed by Chemometrics: A Critical Review and Guideline

The use of univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistical techniques, such as analysis of variance, multiple comparisons of means, and linear correlations, has spread widely in the area of Food Science and Technology. However, the use of supervised and unsupervised statistical techniques (chemometrics) in order to analyze and model experimental data from physicochemical, sensory, metabolomics, quality control, nutritional, microbiological, and chemical assays in food research has gained more space. Therefore, we present here a manuscript with theoretical details, a critical analysis of published work, and a guideline for the reader to check and propose mathematical models of experimental results using the most promising supervised and unsupervised multivariate statistical techniques, namely: principal component analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis, linear discriminant analysis, partial least square regression, k-nearest neighbors, and soft independent modeling of class analogy. In addition, the overall features, advantages, and limitations of such statistical methods are presented and discussed. Published examples are focused on sensory, chemical, and antioxidant activity of a wide range of fruit juices consumed worldwide.