Spectroscopy and Spectral Imaging Techniques for Non-destructive Food Microbial Assessment

Spectroscopy and Spectral Imaging Techniques for Non-destructive Food Microbial Assessment

Most contamination in agricultural and food products is caused by undesirable microorganisms which are available in food. Microbial evaluation plays a very important role in food quality assessment. Typical methods to detect microbial loads are time-consuming, tedious, labor-intensive and destructive. Recently, a few techniques like Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy has been with advantages of being rapid, non-destructive and efficient to assessment microbial contamination. Moreover, hyperspectral imaging (HSI) and multispectral imaging (MSI), the technologies that simultaneously provide spectral and spatial information of foodstuffs, are now widely applied. In this paper, we describe recent progresses and applications of these optical techniques are described as efficient tools in replacing traditional technologies for detecting spoilage microorganisms in various raw and processed food products. It would be expected that efficient spectroscopy and Microbial evaluation spectral imaging systems would likely be developed and applied for online microbial evaluation in agricultural and food industry.