This study was aimed at exploring the feasibility of detecting and quantifying melamine, and the structural analogue cyanuric acid, contamination in soybean meal, using line-scan near infrared (NIR) hyperspectral imaging spectroscopy (HIS). Soybean meal is one of the main ingredients used in the feed industry because it offers a complete protein profile. Each year, demand increases for soybean products and soya oil, the consumption of which is directly boosted by Chinese consumers' growing wealth, and for soybean meal, which is indirectly affected by the growing demand for meat. Recent cases of deliberate melamine contamination of soybean meal have been reported. This study focuses on the development of a methodology based on NIR-HIS for the acquisition, treatment and interpretation of images and spectra, as well as for the detection and quantification of melamine and cyanuric acid contamination in soybean meal. A total of 40 commercial soybean meal samples were collected, and 17 adulterated samples were prepared by adding different amounts of melamine/cyanuric acid to the samples, with concentrations varying between 0.5% and 5%. The spectral data were collected using line-scan NIR-HIS, and a qualitative model was created based on a principal-component analysis (PCA), whereas partial least-squares discriminant analysis was used to obtain a discrimination model and a semi-quantitative prediction of the content of contaminant. This study has permitted the detection of low levels of melamine and also revealed some limitations for the feasibility of quantifying melamine in soybean meal.
This preliminary work comprises examples where near infrared (NIR) hyperspectral imaging has been applied to identify animal bone material in complex sieved soil-sediment matrices from an archaeological excavation at a Stone Age site in northern Scandinavia. NIR hyperspectral image analysis has been performed, as a fast and non-destructive technique, on whole bone and tooth samples, as well as on soil from the excavation containing fragmented skeletal material in order to identify fragmented bones, to provide information about the skeletal material's chemistry-mineralogy within the site and the different layers as well as studying the possibility of describing their different state of preservation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.