Nondestructive Differentiation of Panax Species Using Visible and Shortwave Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

Visible and short-wave near-infrared (Vis-SWNIR) spectroscopy was investigated to differentiate species of panax, including American Panax quinquefoliumI, Chinese Panax quinquefolium, and Chinese Panax ginseng. Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied before least-square support vector machine (LS-SVM) modeling, and the vast points of the spectral data (376–1,025 nm) were effectively reduced. PCA-LS-SVM differentiated species with 100% correct classification rate for the tested samples. In addition, effective wavelengths were selected according to modeling power, discrimination power, regression coefficients, loading weights, and genetic algorithms, respectively. The optimal and simplified LS-SVM model with 100% correct classification rate was achieved using the effective wavelengths selected by genetic algorithms. The results showed that Vis-SWNIR spectroscopy technique can be applied as a high accuracy and fast way for the qualitative discrimination of herb species.