Ability of NIR spectroscopy to predict meat chemical composition and quality - a review

In contrast to conventional methods for the determination of meat chemical composition and quality, near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) enables rapid, simple and simultaneous assessment of numerous meat properties. The present article is a review of published studies that examined the ability of NIRS to predict different meat properties. According to the published results, NIRS shows a great potential to replace the expensive and time-consuming chemical analysis of meat composition. On the other hand, NIRS is less accurate for predicting different attributes of meat quality. In view of meat quality evaluation, the use of NIRS appears more promising when categorizing meat into quality classes on the basis of meat quality traits for example discriminating between feeding regimes, discriminating fresh from frozen-thawed meat, discriminating strains, etc. The performance of NIRS to predict meat properties seems limited by the reliability of the method to which it is calibrated. Moreover, the use of NIRS may also be limited by the fact that it needs a laborious calibration for every purpose. In spite of that, NIRS is considered to be a very promising method for rapid meat evaluation.