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A5-IL: DEVELOPMENT AND POSSIBILITIES OF APPLICATION OF NEAR INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY (NIRS) IN FOOD QUALITY CONTROL

Jasna Mastilović, Milica Pojić

Institute for food technology in Novi Sad - FINS

University of Novi Sad

Contemporary approach to management of quality of food products demands permanent control of raw materials and byproducts and monitoring of different quality parameters throughout the whole flow of technological process of food production. During past decades the role and range of application of methods and instruments based on spectroscopic measurements in near infrared spectral range increase in relevance and areas of practical application as well as in range of directions of development of new possible applications. 

The main advantages of application of near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in process and products control are low cost of analysis, absence of need of utilization of chemical reagents, short time needed for obtaining of the results, extremely simple sample preparation and instrument operation procedure and minimization of occurrence  of measurement errors.

The prerequisite for introduction of NIRS methods in practice is the development and validation of calibration method through which the data obtained by spectral measurement are transformed into trustworthy values of measured quality parameter. Having in mind that the spectra in near infrared spectral range represent the bends characteristic for different overlapping hydrogen bonds in organic compounds of food the application of advanced statistical and chemometric methods for development of calibration models is necessary.

The first practical application of NIRS techniques for routine analysis was developed and adopted for purpose of determination of moisture and protein content in wheat in early seventies. Since then the instrumentation, computer applications and research directed to development of wider and more specific utilization of NIRS methods resulted in numerous practical applications and consideration of wide range of different parameters that can be more or less precisely determined based on NIRS measurements... Different matrices including grains, powders, pastes and liquids can be analyzed concerning their basic composition but also concerning functional and technological properties of the analyzed material.

Possibilities of measurement of different quality parameters of wheat (kernel harness, sedimentation value, mixing and molding and baking properties), barley (extract and germination), oil crops (fatty acids composition), starch (amylase/amylopectin ratio) feed (metabolic energy) were confirmed to be determinable through the utilization of NIRS techniques.