Prediction of fatty acid composition in Camellia oleifera oil by near infrared transmittance spectroscopy (NITS)

► The oil content of 132 C. oleifera seeds was determined by the Soxhlet. ► FA of C. oleifera oil is composed of palmitic, stearic, oleic and linoleic acids. ► Feasibility of NITS for the determination of FA composition in the C. oil is explored. ► The performance of NITS models of oleic, linoleic, palmitic acids are rather ideal. ► The performance of NITS models of the stearic and unsaturated acids are not so good. Under the serious circumstances of Camellia oleifera adulteration, the accurate examination for quality trait of C. oleifera oil is extremely urgent. For rapid determination of FA composition in C. oleifera oil, the feasibility of NITS was first studied. The quantitative models for FA were built based on PLS regression. NITS spectra is able to accurately predict for oleic, linoleic, and palmitic acids (Rcv>0.844, R2>0.886). Rcv are 0.91987, 0.95755, and 0.84447, and R2 are 0.9424, 0.9682, 0.8862 for NITS models of oleic, linoleic, and palmitic acids, respectively. But models for stearic and unsaturated acids are less accurate, with values of Rcv from 0.67440 to 0.69114, and R2 from 0.6834 to 0.7587. These results indicate that NITS will have potential to be used in predicting FA composition of C. oleifera oil.