Application of principal component and hierarchical cluster analyses in the classification of Serbian bottled waters and a comparison with waters from some European countries

The contents of major ions in bottled waters were analyzed by principal component (PCA) and hierarchical cluster (HCA) analysis in order to investigate if these techniques could provide the information necessary for classifications of the water brands marketed in Serbia. Data on the contents of Ca2+, Mg2+, Na+, K+, Cl-, SO4 2-, HCO3 - and total dissolved solids (TDS) of 33 bottled waters was used as the input data set. The waters were separated into three main clusters according to their levels of TDS, Na+ and HCO3 -; sub-clustering revealed a group of soft waters with the lowest total hardness. Based on the determined chemical parameters, the Serbian waters were further compared with available literature data on bottled waters from some other European countries. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report applying chemometric classification of bottled waters from different European countries, thereby representing a unique attempt in contrast to previous studies reporting the results primarily on a country-to-country scale. The diverse character of Serbian bottled waters was demonstrated as well as the usefulness of PCA and HCA in the fast classification of the water brands based on their main chemical parameters. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 172050]