A feasibility study of rapid nondestructive detection of total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N) content in beef based on airflow and laser ranging technique

To investigate the feasibility of airflow and laser ranging technique for nondestructively determination of TVB-N in beef, a viscoelasticity detection system was employed to collect deformation information of beef samples. Then 12 characteristic parameters were extracted from deformation curves. Multiple linear regression (MLR), principal component regression (PCR) and partial least squares regression (PLSR) were used to establish prediction models for TVB-N. The results showed that the PLSR model using 12 characteristic parameters performed the best with correlation coefficients in calibration and prediction sets (R-c and R-p) of 0.847 and 0.821, root mean squared errors in the calibration and prediction sets (RMSEC and RMSEP) of 1.750 and 2.560 mg/100 g. This result demonstrated that it was feasible to use airflow and laser ranging technique for rapid and nondestructive detection of beef freshness. This study made possible that the deformation characteristics of livestock and poultry meat could be expressed in a quantitative method.