NEW TENDENCIES IN THE GROUP ANALYSIS OF HYDROCHEMICAL OBJECTS AND FOODSTUFFS (REVIEW)

In the studies of the human habitat, similar organic substances are commonly determined summarily (group analysis). In the present work, a review of publications related to the years 2015-2023, dealing with the group analysis of hydrochemical objects and foodstuffs is presented. In both cases, a traditional and most widespread method of group analysis is the total index calculation, in spite of the metrological incorrectness of this method. The corresponding assays include measuring of generalized signals, construction of univariate calibration and rough estimation of the total content (cΣ) of the analytes, calculated for a certain standard substance. The new group analysis instruments for hydrochemical objects are the inverted multivariate calibrations, and for antioxidant determination in foodstuffs - the interval estimates of cΣ. These new group analysis variants lead to more correct results, however, they have not been studied in sufficient detail and are rarely used in actual practice. The application of multivariate calibrations is hindered by the labour-intensive construction of training sets, while the use of interval estimates is hindered by the intergroup signal selectivity, leading to excessively wide intervals. The trends in the development of group analysis and promising directions of future investigations are discussed.