Abstract: A high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) fingerprint of organic acids in sweet cherry juice was developed by using the software of Similarity Evaluation System for Chromatographic Fingerprints of Traditional Chinese Medicine (Version 2.0). Moreover, based on the fingerprint, similarity analysis, principal component analysis (PCA), and cluster analysis (CA) were used to discriminate whether sweet cherry juice was adulterated with apple juice, pear juice, apricot juice, peach juice, or exogenous citric acid. Results showed that the similarities between the reference fingerprint and those of 42 sweet cherry juice samples were all above 0.948. The fingerprint of sweet cherry juice was well consistent among varieties and harvest times. Adulteration reduced the similarities. All the adulterated juice samples especially at higher adulteration levels could be discriminated from pure sweet cherry juices by using the HPLC fingerprint combined with PCA and CA, while only sufficiently high levels of adulteration could be discriminated by similarity analysis. It is suggested that sweet cherry juice adulteration could be discriminated by HPLC fingerprints combined with chemometrics, which may be useful for the authentication and quality control of sweet cherry juice.

Key words: sweet cherry juice, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), fringerprint, authentication, principal component analysis, cluster analysis