Fat is one of the most important traits determining the quality of pork. The composition of the fat greatly influences the quality of pork and its processed products, and contribute to defining the overall carcass value. However, establishing an efficient method for assessing fat quality parameters such as fatty acid composition, solid fat content, oxidative stability, iodine value, and fat color, remains a challenge that must be addressed. Conventional methods such as visual inspection, mechanical methods, and chemical methods are used off the production line, which often results in an inaccurate representation of the process because the dynamics are lost due to the time required to perform the analysis. Consequently, rapid, and non-destructive alternative methods are needed. In this paper, the traditional fat quality assessment techniques are discussed with emphasis on spectroscopic techniques as an alternative. Potential spectroscopic techniques include infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance and Raman spectroscopy. Hyperspectral imaging as an emerging advanced spectroscopy-based technology is introduced and discussed for the recent development of assessment for fat quality attributes. All techniques are described in terms of their operating principles and the research advances involving their application for pork fat quality parameters. Future trends for the non-destructive spectroscopic techniques are also discussed.

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Moringa oleifera leaves are generally consumed in the dry powdered form. Therefore, this research was carried out to investigate the effect of temperature on the nutritional quality of M. oleifera leaves powder. The leaves were dried under the shade at 30°C for two weeks and in the oven at temperature range from 40 to 70C for 2 h. The results show that temperature affects nutrient composition of the leaf powder. As the drying temperature increased, crude protein decreased significantly (p≤0.05). The samples from shade drying had protein content value of 28.44 g/100 g, while samples those dried at 70°C had 19.89 g/100 g. Similar trends were observed for fat content which was 2.69 g/100 g for shade drying and 2.46 g/100 g at 70C. The ash, fibre and carbohydrate contents of leaf powder increased with drying temperature. Samples from shade drying had 4.55, 16.33, and 32.75 g/100g for ash, fibre and carbohydrate respectively. However, the amounts of ash, fibre and carbohydrate increased significantly to 5.20, 17.66 and 52.30 g/100 g, respectively when dried at 70°C. The beta-carotene which is the precursor of vitamin A significantly (p<0.05) decreased from 5,220.20 mg/100 g in shade dried leaves to 4,946.20 mg/100 g in oven dried at 70 C. Vitamin C content decreased slightly from 27.39 mg/100 g for shade dried to 25.70 mg/100 g, dried at 70C. The minerals investigated generally showed significant increase with temperature. In general, the nutritional parameters of M. oleifera leaves dried in the shade varied closely with those dried in the oven at 40 and 50C for 2 h.