American Journal of Food Science and Technology

Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) technique as an advance innovative technology has come to stay in food, chemical, pharmaceutical, petrochemical industries. This technology coupled with the development of chemometric techniques has become a powerful, fast, reliable and non-destructive analytical tool for the measurement of qualitative and quantitative properties in organic materials. This review paper focuses on the potential application of NIRS as an advance analytical tool for the determination of harmful chemical residues in food materials. The results of rich studies conducted previously revealed that the application of NIRS technique was successful in detecting and to some extent measure harmful chemical residues such as Agro-chemicals and Mycotoxins in foods. It was however observed that, NIR spectroscopy had poor sensitivity in quantifying chemical residues in food materials. It can therefore be concluded that there is the need to work towards the advancement of this tool for accurate measurement of chemical residues in food. This tool has a far reaching merit as an initial tool for detecting and sorting of food product with and without harmful chemical residues. NIRS advance analytical tool was found to be quick, non-destructive & semi-destructive, low cost and environmentally friendly in relation to the reference antecedent methods such as HPLC, HTLC, GC-MS and ELISA in the classification of food commodities with and without harmful chemical residue.

American Journal of Food Science and Technology. 2013, 1(1), 1-8. DOI: 10.12691/ajfst-1-1-1
Pub. Date: May 08, 2013

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