An Artificial Intelligence-based tool to predict “unhealthy” wine and olive oil

Abstract

The application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the agri-food industry has witnessed significant advancements, particularly in healthy food, quality assessment, and geographical origin determination of agri-products such as wine and olive oils, whose international market is constantly growing. This paper explores the applicability of Machine Learning (ML) models for predicting “unhealthy” wines and olive oils. As for the healthy factor, two main characteristics of wines and olive oils were evaluated: their quality and their geographical origin. In the study, 3 ML algorithms were compared (Random Forest, Linear Discriminant Analysis, and K-Nearest Neighbors) to predict just by observing their chemical characteristics: i) the quality of red and white wine and ii) the geographical origins of wine and olive oils. Real datasets were used for these case studies. The Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) was used to manage imbalanced data, and well-adopted AI metrics were collected to evaluate the accuracy of the predictions made by the 3 ML algorithms. 3 datasets were analyzed: dataset #01 contains ∼7000 data entries related to 2 types of wine (red and white Portuguese wines) and 11 wine's chemical characteristics; dataset #02 contains 178 data entries related to 3 different Italian vineyards and 13 wine's chemical characteristics; dataset #03 contains 572 data entries related to 9 different Italian geographical regions for olive oil and 7 fatty acid characteristics. A total of ∼7700 data points, 5 wines and 9 olive oil types, and 31 chemical characteristics were analyzed. 12 quality metrics were collected per each dataset analysis. The designed ML models achieved good accuracy (>0.65) in predicting the wine quality, a very high accuracy (>0.99) in predicting its vineyard, and a very good accuracy (>0.97) in predicting the origin of olive oil. Moreover, an AI-based tool has been developed that stakeholders can use to predict the quality and geographical origin of wine and olive oil to avoid possible fraudulent and unhealthy product labels. The obtained prediction results showcase AI and ML's potential to help the agri-food industry, providing valuable insights and innovations for producers, distributors, and consumers alike. Integrating AI and ML in the agri-food industry may enhance product quality, consumer trust, and market transparency.