Autenticação de pau-brasil (Caesalpinia echinata, Lam.) por espectroscopia NIR e quimiometria

Abstract

Illegal wood extraction is still sweeping thousands of tree species across the globe. One of the most coveted species is Pau-Brasil (Caesalpinia echinata, Lam), reddish-brown noble wood, commonly found in the Atlantic Rainforest. Considering that, there are some tree species that are easily confused with the true Pau-Brazil, and this work proposes the application of a PCA (Principal Component Analysis) an unsupervised classification model from NIR (near infrared) spectra collected from outermost parts of the stem of true Pau-Brazil tree species and false species named also Pau-Brasil. From this study, it was possible to develop from NIR spectroscopy coupled to the PCA models in the development of a non-destructive analytical methodology for the authentication of Pau-Brazil tree species.