E Mezzatesta
IMBE, Aix Marseille Univ, Avignon Univ, CNRS, IRD, Marseille, France
Publications
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Research Article
Determination of Water Content in Vanilla Pods and Powder Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
Author(s): A Barreau*, E Mezzatesta, S Charvet, P Faury, I Bombarda and N Dupuy
The quality of vanilla depends heavily on its water content, a key parameter that influences its stability, preservation, and sensory properties. Conventional moisture determination by loss-on-drying, while accurate, is slow and destructive. In this study, a rapid, non-destructive approach based on near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy combined with chemometric modeling was developed to predict the moisture content of vanilla samples. A total of 123 samples were analyzed by NIR spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis (reference values). Principal component analysis revealed a strong correlation between spectral variance and water content in the 7400- 4000 cm−1 region. A partial least squares (PLS) regression model was optimized and validated, showing optimal performance with four latent variables (R2 = 0.99, RMSEC = 0.98). Prediction on an independent set of 20 samples yielded a .. Read More»