Determination of Egg Storage Time at Room Temperature Using a Low-Cost NIR Spectrometer and Machine Learning Techniques

[Abstract] Currently, consumers are more concerned about freshness and quality of food. Poultry egg storage time is a freshness and quality indicator in industrial and consumer applications, even though egg marking is not always required outside the European Union. Other authors have already published works using expensive laboratory equipment in order to determine the storage time and freshness of eggs. This paper presents a novel alternative method based on low-cost devices for the rapid and non-destructive prediction of egg storage time at room temperature (23 ± 1 °C). H&N brown flock with 49-week-old hens were used as a source for the sampled eggs. Samples were scanned for a period of 22 days beginning from the time the egg was laid. The spectral acquisition was performed using a low-cost near-infrared reflectance (NIR) spectrometer which has a wavelength range between 740 nm and 1070 nm. The resulting dataset of 660 samples was randomly split according to a 10-fold cross-validation in order to be used in a contrast and optimization process of two machine learning algorithms. During the optimization, several models were tested to develop a robust calibration model. The best model used a Savitzky Golay pre-processing technique with a third derivative order and an artificial neural network with ten neurons in one hidden layer. Regressing the storage time of the eggs, tests achieved a coefficient of determination (R-squared) of 0.8319 ± 0.0377 and a root mean squared error in cross-validation test set (RMSECV) of 1.97 days. Although further work is needed, this technique shows industrial potential and consumer utility to determine an egg's freshness using a low-cost spectrometer connected to a smartphone

Low Budget Respirometer Chamber Design Based on Wireless Sensor Network

Fresh fruit respiration information is essential optimizing food storage systems. Meanwhile, respiration is defined as the process of oxygen production and carbon dioxide release during storage in a closed respiratory chamber. Therefore, this study aims to design a low-budget computerized respiratory chamber for enhancing fruit packaging and storage system. Real-time fruit respiration can be measured by applying wireless gas sensors network. The respirometer consisted of 3,600 mL glass jar with a screw stainless lid, while the electrochemical and non-dispersive infrared sensors were mounted on the cover of the glass jar for collecting data on the oxygen, carbon dioxide, and temperature during mangoes’ respiration. Arduino USB port was used to record all measured parameters consisting of oxygen (%) and carbon dioxide concentrations (ppm, as well as temperature in the respiration chamber. Additionally, a controlled cooling chamber was applied to maintain the temperature during storage, while data communication was supported by Xbee S2C based on radio frequency. According to the respirometer real-time reading, there was a decrease in oxygen concentration caused by increasing carbon dioxide release with temperature. The low-budget respirometer was used to measure the respiration rate and record the data through a wireless sensor network system. The data plot shows that the respiration rate increased as the storage temperature and the respiratory quotient ranged from 0.32-0.44

Machine Learning and Data Mining-Based Methods to Estimate Parity Status and Age of Wild Mosquito Vectors of Infectious Diseases from Near-Infrared Spectra

Previous studies show that a trained partial least square regresser (PLSR) from near-infrared spectra classify laboratory and semi-field raised mosquitoes into less than or ≥ to seven days old with an average accuracy of 80%. This dissertation demonstrates that training models on near-infrared spectra (NIRS) using artificial neural network (ANN) as an architecture yields models with higher accuracies than training models using partial least squares (PLS) as an architecture. In addition, irrespective of the model architecture used, direct training of a binary classifier scores higher accuracy than training a regresser and interpreting it as a binary classifier. Furthermore, for the first time, this dissertation shows that training ANN models on autoencoded near-infrared spectra yields models that estimate parity status of wild mosquitoes with an accuracy of ≈93%, which is strong enough to support NIRS models as an alternative to ovary dissections. Results from this dissertation also show that there is no significant difference between spectra collected from semi-field raised and wild mosquitoes of the same species, supporting the on-going practice of training models on semi-field raised mosquitoes to estimate the age class in days of wild mosquitoes. Finally, the study shows that an ANN model trained on semi-field mosquitoes classifies wild mosquitoes into either less than or ≥ to seven days old with an average accuracy of 76%. In conclusion, the results in this dissertation strongly suggest the use of ANNs as a suitable architecture to train models that estimate parity status and age in days of wild mosquito vectors of infectious diseases. The results further suggest near-infrared spectroscopy as an appropriate alternative tool to estimate different parameters of mosquito vectors of infectious diseases

Portable NIR spectroscopy: the route to green analytical chemistry

There is a growing interest for cost-effective and nondestructive analytical techniques in both research and application fields. The growing approach by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRs) pushes to develop handheld devices devoted to be easily applied for in situ determinations. Consequently, portable NIR spectrometers actually result definitively recognized as powerful instruments, able to perform nondestructive, online, or in situ analyses, and useful tools characterized by increasingly smaller size, lower cost, higher robustness, easy-to-use by operator, portable and with ergonomic profile. Chemometrics play a fundamental role to obtain useful and meaningful results from NIR spectra. In this review, portable NIRs applications, published in the period 2019–2022, have been selected to indicate starting references. These publications have been chosen among the many examples of the most recent applications to demonstrate the potential of this analytical approach which, not having the need for extraction processes or any other pre-treatment of the sample under examination, can be considered the “true green analytical chemistry” which allows the analysis where the sample to be characterized is located. In the case of industrial processes or plant or animal samples, it is even possible to follow the variation or evolution of fundamental parameters over time. Publications of specific applications in this field continuously appear in the literature, often in unfamiliar journal or in dedicated special issues. This review aims to give starting references, sometimes not easy to be found

Prediction of mosquito species and population age structure using mid-infrared spectroscopy and supervised machine learning

Despite the global efforts made in the fight against malaria, the disease is resurging. One of the main causes is the resistance that Anopheles mosquitoes, vectors of the disease, have developed to insecticides. Anopheles must survive for at least 10 days to possibly transmit malaria. Therefore, to evaluate and improve malaria vector control interventions, it is imperative to monitor and accurately estimate the age distribution of mosquito populations as well as their population sizes. Here, we demonstrate a machine-learning based approach that uses mid-infrared spectra of mosquitoes to characterise simultaneously both age and species identity of females of the African malaria vector species Anopheles gambiae and An. arabiensis. mid-infrared spectroscopy-based prediction of mosquito age structures was statistically indistinguishable from true modelled distributions. The accuracy of classifying mosquitoes by species was 82.6%. The method has a negligible cost per mosquito, does not require highly trained personnel, is rapid, and so can be easily applied in both laboratory and field settings. Our results indicate this method is a promising alternative to current mosquito species and age-grading approaches, with further improvements to accuracy and expansion for use with other mosquito vectors possible through collection of larger mid-infrared spectroscopy data sets

Mealiness Detection in Agricultural Crops: Destructive and Nondestructive Tests: A Review

Mealiness is known as an important internal quality attribute of fruits/vegetables, which has significant influence on consumer purchasing decisions. Mealiness has been a topic of research interest over the past several decades. A number of destructive and nondestructive techniques are introduced for mealiness detection. Nondestructive methods are more interesting because they are rapid, noninvasive, and suitable for real-time purposes. In this review, the concept of mealiness is presented for potato, apple, and peach, followed by an in-depth discussion about applications of destructive and nondestructive techniques developed for mealiness detection. The results suggest the potential of electromagnetic-based techniques for nondestructive mealiness evaluation. Further investigations are in progress to find more appropriate nondestructive techniques as well as cost and performance

Aiding the conservation of two wooden Buddhist sculptures with 3D imaging and spectroscopic techniques

The conservation of Buddhist sculptures that were transferred to Europe at some point during their lifetime raises numerous questions: while these objects historically served a religious, devotional purpose, many of them currently belong to museums or private collections, where they are detached from their original context and often adapted to western taste. A scientific study was carried out to address questions from Museo d'Arte Orientale of Turin curators in terms of whether these artifacts might be forgeries or replicas, and how they may have transformed over time. Several analytical techniques were used for materials identification and to study the production technique, ultimately aiming to discriminate the original materials from those added within later interventions