Spectroscopy and Food  

Food safety and analysis is a hot topic these days. The food sector could be greatly helped by new analytical methods that are accurate, rapid, and integrated into the production process to meet consumer demand and respect limits imposed by international standards. Spectroscopy is an excellent tool to analyse the new technologies and developments within the food and beverage industry.

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We have here some interesting articles on food applications which we would like to introduce. If you would like to read the full article, please let us know.

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Evaluation of Grape Quality Parameters by a Simple VIS/NIR System 

Grape composition at harvest is one of the most important factors determining the future quality of wine. Measurement of grape characteristics that impact product quality is a requirement for vineyard improvement and for optimum production of wines (Carrara et al., 2008). Inspection of grapes upon arrival at the winery is a critical point in the wine production chain (Elbatawi and Ebaid, 2006). This check determines both the quality of the wine and the viticulturers fees. This control is usually performed only on small samples that are not always representative of the whole so the importance of this operation is easy to understand, as it determines the economic value of the entire stock.

 

Rapid Detection of Heavy Metal Contents in Fruit by LIBS

In recent years, heavy metals elements contained in fertiliser and environment contamination have been used in agriculture widely, with some deleterious heavy metals elements such as plumbum (Pb), cadmium (Cd), hydrargyrum (Hg), chromium (Cr) and arsenic (As) transmitted into fruits and other farm produces. Some of them are transited into highly toxic compounds which go with food in to the body.  The detection and identification of heavy metals elements in foods, such as fruits, has been an important problem around the world. In this paper, the characteristic spectrum of elements Pb, Cd, Hg,Cr and As in orange pericarp and flesh were collected by laser induced breakdown spectroscopy. Based on preliminary results, it would be seem necessary to develop an innovative strategy to rapidly detect heavy metal contents in fruits.

 

Analysis of Peach Ripeness by an Electronic Nose and Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

Total soluble sugar content (SSC) and firmness are the indicators that better match the consumer's perception of maturity, but they currently require a destructive measurement. In this work, an Electronic Nose and a Near Infrared Spectrometer have been used as non-destructive techniques to assess the ripeness state of peach samples. To evaluate the performance of the two techniques, the electronic nose responses and the NIR spectra have been correlated with SSC and firmness values, measured by a refractometer and a penetrometer respectively. The data has been analysed by multivariate regression methods (MLR, PCR, PLS, Surface Response Modeling) and they gave good prediction results both for SSC and for firmness. 
 

Sweet Cherry Fruit Analysis with Reflectance Measurements

The total sweet cherry production of the world ranges between 1.4 and 1.6 million tons. Europe has a leading role as a farming area with more than 50% of sweet cherries being grown here. Based on the most recent data, the average amount of sweet cherries produced in Hungary is around 10-12 thousand tons. Therefore fast and effective method is important for sweet cherry fruit quality analyses. The aim of the study was to examine the applicability of reflectance measurements for sweet cherry fruit quality analyses.