Combination of NIR spectroscopy and machine learning for monitoring chili sauce adulterated with ripened papaya

King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Agricultural Engineering, Post Harvest Innovation Research and Development Laboratory, Bangkok, Thailand

^* Corresponding author: ravipat.la@kmitl.ac.th

Abstract

This research aimed to study the combination of NIR spectroscopy and machine learning for monitoring chilli sauce adulterated with papaya smoothie. The chilli sauce was produced by the famous community enterprise of chilli sauce processing in Thailand. The ingredients of the chilli sauce consisted of 45% chilli, 25% sugar, 20% garlic, 5% vinegar, and 5% salt. The chilli sauce sample was mixed with ripened papaya (Khaek Dam variety) smoothie with 9 levels from 10 to 90 %w/w. The NIR spectra of pure chilli sauce, papaya smoothie and 9 adulterated chilli sauce samples were recorded using FT-NIR spectrometer in the wavenumber range of 12500 and 4000 cm^-1. Three machine learning algorithms were applied to develop a model for monitoring adulterated chilli sauce, including partial least squares regression (PLS), support vector machine (SVM), and backpropagation neural network (BPNN). All model presented performance of prediction in the validation set with R²_al = 0.99 while RMSEP of PLS, SVM and BPNN were 1.71, 2.18 and 3.27% w/w respectively. This finding indicated that NIR spectroscopy coupled with machine learning approaches were shown to be an alternative technique to monitor papaya smoothie adulterated in chilli sauce in the global food industry.