Near‐Infrared Spectroscopy and Chemometrics in Food and Agriculture

Abstract

Abstract Nowadays, the analytical needs of the agrifood industries are not only to comply with regulations to meet quality standards and protect their products from food fraud but also to self‐monitor their processes to improve their efficiency. In addition, a key aspect is to be able to control and trace products along the entire food chain – ‘from farm to fork’ – and for these purposes, near‐infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) sensors are well suited. This article addresses the potential of NIRS to respond to specific issues in agriculture and food products and the main data processing methods used for application development, presenting some case studies related to animal feeds, rendering products, and fruits and vegetables. Moreover, the article focuses on showing the transition between the traditional use of NIRS at laboratory level and the current trend of using NIRS in situ, encouraged by the evolution of instrumentation, with portable or on‐line devices now possible and combining the spectral signal with other information and communication technologies to build decision support systems to assist and support industry. The current and future trends in the use of NIRS combined with chemometric for food products and processed assessment are also reported.