Dynamic monitoring of fatty acid value in rice storage based on a portable near-infrared spectroscopy system

The fatty acid value of rice is one of the important indexes to reflect its freshness. A portable near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) system was designed and assembled to dynamically monitor fatty acid values in rice storage in this study. First, the near-infrared (NIR) spectra of rice samples in different storage periods were obtained using the portable NIRS system. Then, a weighted multiplicative scatter correction with variable selection (WMSCVS) algorithm was applied to the original spectra for scattering correction, and to compress variable space for achieving characteristic wavelengths. Finally, a partial least square (PLS) regression model was established using the characteristic wavelengths to realize the rapid monitoring of fatty acid values in rice storage. The results showed that the performance of the optimal PLS model based on the features by the WMSCVS algorithm was significantly better than those of the optimal PLS models based on SNV and MSC pre-processing spectra, with the determination coefficient (RP2) of 0.9615 and the root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) of 0.3626 in the predictive process. The overall results demonstrate that it is feasible to use the portable NIRS system developed by our team to quickly monitor the fatty acid values in rice storage.