Open Access
Non-destructive spectroscopy-based technologies for meat and meat product discrimination: a review
(Elsevier, 2025-10-01) León Ecay, Sara; Insausti Barrenetxea, Kizkitza; López Maestresalas, Ainara; Prieto, Nuria; Ingeniería; Ingeniaritza; Agronomía, Biotecnología y Alimentación; Agronomia, Bioteknologia eta Elikadura; Institute on Innovation and Sustainable Development in Food Chain - ISFOOD; Universidad Pública de Navarra / Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa; Gobierno de Navarra / Nafarroako Gobernua
Consumers' confidence in products of animal origin is highly subjected to the quality guarantees offered by the manufacturing and retail industries. Traditionally, meat quality evaluation has been conducted through destructive, time-consuming and chemical-dependent protocols. Smart methodologies based on the non-destructiveness and/or non-contact with the samples, such as spectroscopy-based technologies, arise as an alternative promising tool. This comprehensive overview includes literature published in the last decade applying spectroscopy-based techniques in the Visible (Vis) and near-infrared (NIR) regions of the spectrum (Vis-NIR), either individually or combined with imaging (hyperspectral imaging, HSI), to classify meat and meat products based on ante- or postmortem factors. First, a brief introduction to the fundamentals of Vis-NIRS and HSI is included. Secondly, the main applications of Vis-NIRS and HSI technologies for meat qualitative purposes only are discussed. The Vis-NIRS and HSI have been successfully used in lab scale studies (> 90 % overall accuracy) to discriminate meat and meat products according to antemortem (feeding system, species, origin and breed) and postmortem (freshness, meat quality, label claims) factors. Recently, spectral data collected with handheld Vis-NIR equipment have become more frequent, although the use of portable HSI has not been widely explored. From the studies reviewed, the main concern regarding spectral data is to shorten modelling handling times, including strategies to both extract optimal wavelengths from NIR and compress spectral data from HSI. Despite the efforts made to overcome instrumentation and data processing challenges, a gap remains to be covered up to a real-time implementation in industrial line quality control.
Open Access
Early detection of Esca disease in grapevines using in-field hyperspectral proximal sensing
(Hellenic Society of Agricultural Engineers, 2025) López Maestresalas, Ainara; Ruiz de Gauna González, Jon; Jarén Ceballos, Carmen; León Ecay, Sara; Arazuri Garín, Silvia; Agronomía, Biotecnología y Alimentación; Agronomia, Bioteknologia eta Elikadura; Ingeniería; Ingeniaritza; Institute on Innovation and Sustainable Development in Food Chain - ISFOOD
Esca is one of the most destructive vine diseases in the world. It causes significant economic losses, mainly due to reduced grape yield and quality. Currently, the approved methods of controlling esca include preventive methods such as the use of fungicides on plant wounds or the use of planting systems that do not require intensive pruning, among others. It is therefore advisable to monitor the crop to identify those vines that are susceptible to the disease. For this reason, in this study a proximal hyperspectral camera was used for early detection of esca presence in asymptomatic grapevine leaves. Images of 11 vines of the Tempranillo variety grown in Etxauri (Navarre, Spain) were analysed. Hyperspectral images were acquired using a Specim IQ snapshot camera, mounted on a tripod, working in the range of 400¿1000 nm with a spectral resolution of 7 nm (204 bands), and an image resolution of 512 × 512 pixel including an RGB camera (5 Mpix). The images were taken under natural ambient light conditions on August 21, 2023. From the 11 vines selected, 9 showed visual symptoms of esca and the remaining 2 were asymptomatic to the naked eye. A total of 200 pixels were randomly selected from the dataset, 100 from asymptomatic leaves of asymptomatic vines (class 1) and 100 from asymptomatic leaves of symptomatic vines (class 2). Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) was performed to classify the leaves into the two classes. Classification rates of 97% were achieved in the cross-validation dataset. Models were externally validated at pixel-level using one image of an asymptomatic vine and another of a symptomatic vine. The visualisation of the images confirmed the correct classification of the pixels into the two classes, indicating that by using proximal hyperspectral sensing an early identification of the disease is possible.
Open Access
Combination of spectral and textural features of hyperspectral imaging for the authentication of the diet supplied to fattening cattle
(Elsevier, 2024) León Ecay, Sara; Insausti Barrenetxea, Kizkitza; Arazuri Garín, Silvia; Goenaga Uceda, Irantzu; López Maestresalas, Ainara; Agronomía, Biotecnología y Alimentación; Agronomia, Bioteknologia eta Elikadura; Ingeniería; Ingeniaritza; Institute on Innovation and Sustainable Development in Food Chain - ISFOOD; Universidad Pública de Navarra / Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa
This study explored the potential of hyperspectral imaging in the near infrared region (NIR-HSI) as a non-destructive and rapid tool to discriminate among two beef fattening diets. For that purpose, a feeding trial was carried out with a total of 24 purebred Pirenaica calves. Twelve of them were fed barley and straw (BS) while 11 animals were finished on vegetable by-products (VBPR). When comparing the reference measurements of the meat coming from those animals, only the total collagen ratio expressed the feeding effect (p-value<0.05). To undertake the authentication procedure, two discrimination approaches were run: partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and radial basis function-support vector machine (RBF-SVM). To precisely extract spectral and textural information from the lean portion of the meat steaks, various techniques were executed, such as principal component (PC) images, competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS) for selecting optimal wavelengths, and gray-level-co-occurrence matrix (GLCM). After hyperspectral imaging and the combination of their own texture features, samples were classified according to feeding diet with an overall accuracy of 72.92% for PLS-DA and 80.56% for RBF-SVM. So, the potential of using HSI technology to authenticate the meat obtained from beef supplied a diet based on circular economy techniques was made in evidence.

León Ecay, Sara

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