Palmyrahjaggery is a popular traditional sweetener in Jaffna. It is a nutrient rich crude sugar which is also used in the traditional medicine. The authenticity of the product in markets is questionable since there is no analytical methods exist to detect adulterations. Adulteration spoils the good recognition for the jaggery, which results in lessprofit for the industry, also, it affects the livelihood of those people who directly involved in the production of jaggery. Other than the economic aspects, since jiggery is used in traditional medicine, adulteration of jaggery has some health related consequences as well. In this study the NIR spectroscopyis used to study the principal component analysis for the authentication of jaggery and identification of the adulterant. A reasonable amount ofjaggery samples were used as data set for calibration-validation procedure. Jaggery was produced in a laboratory scale as pure, adulterated with sugar and rice bran at different concentrations. Aqueous solutions of these samples were prepared and NIR spectra of the samples were recorded via using the UV/VIS/NIR spectrophotometer (Jasco V570) with scanning range of 750-1300 nm wavelength. Principal component analysis of the spectra is useful for the identification of the adulterations and for the authentication of jaggery.
