Non-destructive assessment of final color and pH attributes of broiler breast fillets using visible and near-infrared hyperspectral imaging: A preliminary study

Authors: JIANG, HONGZHE - China Agricultural University; Yoon, Seung-Chul; Zhuang, Hong; WANG, WEI - China Agricultural University; LI, YUFENG - Chinese Academy Of Agricultural Sciences; LU, CHENGJUN - Lingang Experimental Middle School; LI, NING - National Linyi Economic And Technological Development Zone

Submitted to: Infrared Physics and Technology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/18/2018
Publication Date: 6/22/2018
Citation: Jiang, H., Yoon, S.C., Zhuang, H., Wang, W., Li, Y., Lu, C., Li, N. 2018. Non-destructive assessment of final color and pH attributes of broiler breast fillets using visible and near-infrared hyperspectral imaging: a preliminary study. Infrared Physics and Technology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infrared.2018.06.025.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infrared.2018.06.025

Interpretive Summary: Chicken breast meat is greatly influenced by many postmortem (PM) factors, such as storage time and deboning time. Complex biochemical and structural changes progressively occur within the fillets, especially during the period of less than 24 h PM time. However, as fresh meat products generally reach consumers or customers beyond 24 h after slaughter, the evaluation of final quality at 24 h PM attributes is more sensible than that before 24 h PM. Color and pH are two major parameters to measure quality of chicken meat. This study is concerned with prediction of color (CIE L* a* b*) and pH values of chicken breast fillets at 24 h PM simultaneously with non-destructive and non-contact imaging technology in the 400-1,000 nm, called hyperspectral imaging (HSI). The hyperspectral image-predictive models were developed with multivariate statistical data analysis and chemometrics. The distribution maps developed for color and pH successfully provided a useful approach for quantitatively visualizing the distribution of final color and pH attributes within chicken fillets. Prediction models need to be further validated and/or enhanced with more samples with larger variations in thevcalibration and/or wider spectral ranges including 1000–2500 nm.

Technical Abstract: In poultry industry, the consensus is the final quality of chicken meat should be assessed at 24'h postmortem (PM). Visible and near-infrared (Vis/NIR, 400–1000'nm) hyperspectral imaging (HSI) was adopted to non-destructively assess final color (color24) and pH (pH24) of broiler breast fillets (pectoralis major). 25 fillets of the collected 75 broiler carcasses were deboned at each of three PM times (2, 4 or 24'h). To obtain representative spectra, regions of interest (ROIs) were extracted from hyperspectral images based on pixels selected from the 2-D scatter pixel plots of the first two principal component (PC) score images. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) showed that color24 was affected by deboning time. Predictive models built with partial least squares regressions (PLSR) performed well for either a*24 or b*24 (Rp'='0.87; RPD'='2.02; RER'='7.91), moderately for L*24 (Rp'='0.75; RPD'='1.45; RER'='5.74), but unsatisfactorily for pH24 which was mainly due to its narrow value range (0.52). Simplified models based on optimal wavelengths selected by regression coefficients (RC) presented better predictive performances for a*24 and b*24 while slightly worse results for L*24 and pH24. Distribution maps were created by pixels prediction in images, and color24 and pH24 within each broiler breast fillet were readily discernible. Overall, Vis/NIR HSI has a good potential to assess color24 and pH24 of chicken meat, but additional sample sizes should be further included to further enhance the prediction capability.