[Webinar]New Frontiers in Representative Sampling for Food Analysis and Process Control Using Raman Spectroscopy

일정: 한국시간 2020년 6월 16일 11:00PM

Food matrices are heterogeneous samples with high chemical complexity. A major requisite for reliable food analysis is thus related to representative sampling. The concept of representative food analysis may seem trivial, the practical implementation of this concept is usually not. Raman spectroscopy is a non-destructive technique for measuring a material’s chemical composition and Raman can be used for food analysis. However, traditional microscope or small-area contact probes do not enable representative sampling, and this has been one of the main challenges preventing the widespread use of this technique in food analysis. Today, recent instrumental developments have faced this challenge by providing new possibilities for probing deeper layers of opaque biological materials, and for covering larger parts of a sample. Spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) and large volumetric probes are two examples in this area, but still, these approaches have not found widespread use in food analysis.

Our recent work shows how wide area illumination, SORS, or large volumetric probes can be used to provide reliable quantitative information in samples that traditionally have been regarded as challenging for Raman spectroscopy. We will highlight examples in measuring fat contents in meat and fish tissue, fatty acid composition in salmon tissue, bone minerals in mechanically deboned chicken meat, collagen contents in ground meat, and even fat, protein and ash contents in by-products from the salmon processing industry. We will also provide in-depth discussion on the use of Raman as a process control tool in enzymatic protein hydrolysis.