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Abstract
Food fraud is generally referred to intentional behaviours to deceive consumers for financial gain. Food fraud during food production can harm the interests of consumers, pose potential safety risks, undermine consumer confidence in industry, and raise cultural and ethical concerns. Spice represents a category of food products that are highly vulnerable to food fraud. However, not all spices have received sufficient attention on the fraud issues. Food fraud in certain spices with relatively lower prices has long been overlooked. Nevertheless, low-priced spices are also those with larger trading volumes. Therefore, there is a need to reinforce the comprehension and detection of fraud in such low-priced, high-traded volume spices. In this thesis, we use ginger as the model to deepen the understanding of the underlying factors and mechanisms of food fraud in such spice products, as well as to enhance robust ginger authentication. The supply chain and business characteristics were identified through food fraud vulnerability assessments to deepen the understanding of underlying factors and mechanisms of food fraud in the ginger supply chain. In addition, the influence of ginger morphological and compositional variations generated during ginger powder processing on macroscopic and microscopic spectroscopy analysis was investigated to enhance the understanding and improve robust spectroscopy-based ginger authentication. By applying both theoretical and empirical food fraud vulnerability assessments, this thesis revealed the critical supply chain characteristics that influence fraud risks are raw material and final products of the supply chain, complexity of the supply chain, and historical evidence in the industry. In addition, the critical business characteristics are raw material and final products of the business, type of actors of the business, and geographical origin of the business. For the detection technology, the investigation on the influence of morphological variations on detection technique profiles revealed considerable impact of particle size on the profiles generated by macroscopic spectroscopy techniques, whereas marginal impact on the profiles generated by microscopic spectroscopy and spectrometry techniques. This thesis also indicated a considerable influence of other variables during ginger production, such as geographical origins, drying methods, etc. Ultimately, this thesis presents a systematic investigation into the underlying factors contributing to food fraud in the ginger supply chain, along with an in-depth analysis of product variations and their impact on spectroscopy- and spectrometry-based ginger authentication techniques. The results from this thesis lay the foundation for enhancing our understanding of food fraud in low-priced, high traded volume spices and advancing food fraud detection technologies.
Original language | English |
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Qualification | Doctor of Philosophy |
Awarding Institution |
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Supervisors/Advisors |
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Award date | 16 Jun 2025 |
Place of Publication | Wageningen |
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DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 16 Jun 2025 |
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Dive into the research topics of 'Unveiling ginger fraud: Key supply chain and business characteristics, and insights from spectroscopic and spectrometric analyses'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Fraud prevention and detection strategies for combating fraud in spice supply chain.
Han, Q. (PhD candidate), Hettinga, K. (Promotor) & Erasmus, S. (Co-promotor)
14/10/19 → 16/06/25
Project: PhD