QUALITY CONTROL AND STANDARDISATION OF TOBACCO BY MEANS OF NMR AND PATTERN RECOGNITION

摘要

A process for establishing a standard specification for a tobacco plant material, comprises: (i) preparing a test solution or test extract of a sample of the tobacco plant material which is known to possess the or each property required for the standard; (ii) submitting the said solution or extract to analysis by a combination of NMR spectroscopy and a computer-based pattern recognition technique; (iii) obtaining results from the analytical methods used in step (ii); and (iv) establishing a standard specification for the said tobacco plant material on the basis of the results obtained in step (iii). Candidate samples of the tobacco plant material may subsequently be tested for compliance with the standard. They can be accepted or rejected depending on whether they five analytical results which fall within or outside either part or all of the specification established in step (iv).