Differentiation of fresh and frozen-thawed poultry breast meat by Near Infrared Spectroscopy

Stefka Atanassova, Veselin Nachev, Todor Stoyanchev, Dimitar Yorgov

Abstract: The aim of the study is to research the feasibility of Near Infrared Spectroscopy and SIMCA classification method for discrimination of fresh and freeze-thawed chicken meat. An experiment was carried out with 4 fresh breast meats and 20 tenderloins of broiler chickens, purchased from a local meat store. All samples were measured twice - once immediately after purchase and again after frozen at minus 22°C and stored at the same temperature for 20 days, then thawed in the refrigerator at 6°C for 8 hours. NIR S measurements were performed by NIR Quest 512 spectrometer (Ocean Optics, Inc.) in the region 900-1700 nm using reflection fiber-optics probe. Differences in spectral data of fresh and frozen-thawed meat samples were found. The most significant differences were found around 938, 1018, 1310, 1374, in the region 1402-1417, around 1470 and 1584 nm. SIMCA models for discrimination of fresh and frozen-thawed meat were developed. The best models were obtained using smoothing and second-derivative transformation of spectral data, which correctly classified 100% of the samples from calibration set. The obtained recognition ratio for validation set was 94.4% for fresh meat and 96.8% for frozen-thawed meat. From the obtained results we can conclude that NIR Spectroscopy and SIMCA have a potential for discriminating fresh from frozen-thawed poultry meat.

Keywords: classification; fresh meat; frozen-thawed meat; near-infrared spectroscopy; poultry breast meat

Date published: 2018-04-30