Project Number: 6612-44000-025-03
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Aug 01, 2004
End Date: Jul 31, 2009

Objective:
Develop spectrometric devices with chemometric models to permit rapid field quality assessment of foods and grains.

Approach:
Small field deployable optical (ultraviolet through mid-infrared region) spectrometers will be explored as rapid noninvasive means to assess quality and characteristics of foods (e.g. cereals and poultry meat), grains (e.g. rice, wheat, and barley) and poultry feed. Field instrument performance will be compared/matched to laboratory instrument performance for methods already developed or under development by the Quality & Safety Assessment Research Unit. Calibration of instruments will be to accepted reference methods (ASTM, AOAC, and AACC). Chemometric multivariate analysis using MATLAB (The Mathworks, Inc.) and PLS_Toolbox (Eigenvector Research, Inc.) software will be used to generate models from reference and spectroscopic data.