UV-visible-shortwave near infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-vis-SWNIR DRS) combined with chemometrics was firstly used as a new method to analyze enantiomer and its racemic compound, using D-, L- and DL-alanine as model compounds. Under the optimal measuring conditions(powder particle sizes of 100-mesh and distance between fiber probe and sample of 5.6mm), after spectral pretreatment and/or wavelength selection, principal component analysis (PCA) and discriminant partial least squares (PLS-DA) resulted in a correct discrimination of chirality with 100 percent accuracy; partial least squares regression (PLR) and support vector regression (SVR) models allowed a satisfied quantitation of D/L binary mixture with determination coefficients (R2) above 0.99 and 0.98 for calibration set and prediction set respectively by both PLR and SVR, and ratios of performance deviation (RPD) far above 2. The results show that it is feasible to apply UV-vis-SWNIR DRS on chiral analysis of compounds.
