Development of hand-held nondestructive detection device for assessing meat freshness

Abstract

Meat freshness is directly related to the health of consumers, and total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N) content is an important reference index for evaluating pork freshness. This paper attempted to measure TVB-N content for assessing pork meat freshness using a new self-developed portable and low cost detection device designed by ourselves basing on near infrared technique. The front-end part of this device was an integrated detection component containing a mini probe which was about 5cm in diameter circle. In the signal acquiring component, silicon photodiode detector was embedded in the center of light source in probe and spectral response range was 400-1100nm to receive diffuse light from pork meat surface in mini probe. The main circuits in this device included stabilized current supply circuit which was used to provide a stable power supply for each LED light source in probe and signal processing circuit which was utilized to complete signal amplification and A/D conversion, In addition, another vital function of the signal processing circuit was to analysis detection signals from mini probe in the detection component. For verifying this device performance, 58 pork samples with different freshness attributes and Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) mathematical method and ratio data processing algorithm were employed to build pork TVB-N content prediction model, and comparing with results from raw data model, the correlation coefficient of prediction and validation of TVB-N were 0.8027 and 0.7291 respectively, and the accuracy of predicting pork freshness was about 78.6%. This work demonstrates that it has the potential in nondestructive detection of TVB-N content in pork meat using this device, which can simplify related instruments design structure and reduce their development cost in future.