Emerging Approach for Fish Freshness Evaluation: Principle, Application and Challenges

Abstract

Affected by micro-organisms and endogenous enzymes, fish are highly perishable during storage, processing and transportation. Efficient evaluation of fish freshness to ensure consumer safety and reduce raw material losses has received an increasing amount of attention. Several of the conventional freshness assessment techniques have plenty of shortcomings, such as being destructive, time-consuming and laborious. Recently, various sensors and spectroscopic techniques have shown great potential due to rapid analysis, low sample preparation and cost-effectiveness, and some methods are especially non-destructive and suitable for online or large-scale operations. Non-destructive techniques typically respond to characteristic substances produced by fish during spoilage without destroying the sample. In this review, we summarize, in detail, the principles and applications of emerging approaches for assessing fish freshness including visual indicators derived from intelligent packaging, active sensors, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and optical spectroscopic techniques. Recent developments in emerging technologies have demonstrated their advantages in detecting fish freshness, but some challenges remain in popularization, optimizing sensor selectivity and sensitivity, and the development of algorithms and chemometrics in spectroscopic techniques.

Amine vapor-responsive ratiometric sensing tag based on HPTS/TPB-PVA fluorescent film for visual determination of fish freshness

“…From the above results, it can be found that compared to packaging materials such as starch and chitosan, PVA has excellent physical properties and is a good choice for the preparation of freshness indicator labels. This is consistent with the findings of Zhang et al ( Zhang, Sun, Sang, Jia & Ou, 2022 ).…”

Prediction of the Freshness of Grass Carp during Storage with Electric Nose Based on Signal Sequence Merging and Wavelet Transform

“…Freshness is very important when assessing the quality of fsh and fshery products [2]. It can be described by various indicators based on biochemical changes after slaughter, including the K value [3], total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N) [4,5], and thiobarbituric acid contents [6].…”

Fast Protein and Metabolites (Nucleotides and Nucleosides) Liquid Chromatography Technique and Chemical Sensor for the Assessment of Fish and Meat Freshness

“…In the final stage of bacterial spoilage, Hx is converted to xanthine, uric acid, and other circle cleavage end products [10,11]. The freshness index K is calculated as the ratio the concentrations of ATP metabolites concentrations (usually presented in µmol/L) [13]:…”