Abstract: 【OBJECTIVE】The objective of this study is to detect whether or not the cumin has been irradiated and estimate the initial absorbed dose of cumin;【METHOD】The cumin was studied as experimental material to investigate the feature changes of ESR spectrum and the relationship between ESR intensity and irradiation dose in the range of 0 to 15.0 kGy and the initial absorbed dose of cumin was assessed by using the dose-additive method;【RESULTS】The ESR signal intensity of irradiated cumin increased with the increasing of the absorbed dose and even after 220 days ESR method could also be used to identify whether or not the cumin has been irradiated. The dose additive method can be used for a reliable evaluation of the absorbed dose in cumin and the deviation between the initial dose and the dose estimated by using 3rd degree polynomial function at different storage times (10, 20 and 30 days) after initial irradiation is all less than 1 kGy, the estimated doses of samples using the 3rd polynomial function are more close to the actual doses than using the exponential function.;【CONCLUSION】The ESR technique could be used as a qualitative and quantitative method to indentify irradiated cumin.

Key words: Irradiation, Electron spin resonance, Storage, Dose-additive method, Signal intensity