Identification of Goose Down and Duck Down using Infrared Spectroscopy and Multivariate Analysis

Down feathers, which are used as a filling material for duvets and winter clothes because of their excellent heat retention, are obtained mainly from domestic geese and ducks, but some are obtained from wild eider ducks. It is important to determine from which bird down was taken because the quality and price of down vary greatly depending on the bird species. In this study, infrared spectroscopy instead of the conventional microscopic observation was used to identify the bird species from which down was obtained. Goose down and duck down could be accurately identified by selecting an appropriate wavenumber region of the infrared (IR) absorption spectrum obtained using the attenuated total reflection (ATR) method and the partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) method. Score plots based on principal component analysis (PCA) were found to be effective for identifying eider duck down and non-eider duck down.