Application of visible-near infrared spectroscopy to evaluate the quality of button mushrooms

Abstract

The Agaricus bisporus mushroom is one of the most cultivated and consumed mushrooms in the world, thanks to its delicacy, nutritional value and flavour. The quality evaluation of the A. bisporus during the harvest is generally established by a visual check by trained operators. This method complies with the request of the Distribution Channel (DC) to retailers and guarantees very low physical damage to the mushrooms; nevertheless, it is subjective and it does not guarantee the highest quality standard for the consumer. The aim of this study was to test the use of visible/near infrared (vis/NIR) reflectance spectroscopy (400-1000 nm) to objectively evaluate the quality parameters of A. bisporus mushrooms. A total of 167 samples of A. bisporus mushrooms were harvested according to the main DC purchasing standards. The vis/NIR analyses were performed the day of sampling just before the physico-chemical analyses (sizes, firmness, soluble solids content and moisture content) used as reference quality parameters. The vis/NIR spectra were correlated to reference measures in order to build predictive models using the partial least squares regression method. Calculated models gave positive results regarding the prediction of the moisture content (r 2 (pred) ¼ 0.78) and firmness (r 2 (pred) ¼ 0.78). Results of this explorative study could be considered encouraging and demonstrate the applicability of vis/NIR spectroscopy on A. bisporus as a rapid technique (i) to monitor the productive process directly at the company, (ii) to standardize the harvest moment, and (iii) to support DC's buyers' choices, nowadays exclusively based on product external characteristics.

Evaluation of energy requirements of an industrial scale plant for the cultivation of white button mushroom (<em>Agaricus bisporus</em>)

“…Mushrooms from the three flushes were harvested by hand and put directly in the baskets ready to be weighed. Each basket was then stored up inside a fridge to preserve mushroom's freshness (Giovenzana et al, 2019). The net yield deriving from the trial (excluded all the defective mushrooms) was 25,000 kg.…”

New preservation and detection technologies for edible mushrooms: A review

“…Ma et al 145 showed that quantitative modeling by NIR spectroscopy could accurately predict the polysaccharide content within Ganoderma lucidum mycelium. Giovenzana et al 146 showed that NIR can be used in combination with multivariate analysis to investigate mushroom quality and thus to predict key quality indicators to determine the appropriate time for harvesting objectively. Xu 147 used NIR spectroscopic analysis and chemometrics to establish a rapid identification method for conventional and aged mushrooms.…”

Environmental impact of a new concept of food service: A case study for the re-use of naval shipping containers

“…PCA can be done by eigenvalue decomposition or singular value decomposition of a data covariance matrix, usually after standardizing the attribute data. The outputs of a PCA are usually graphically discussed in terms of scores (the behaviour of the objects in the PCs space), loadings (the weight of the standardized original variables) and scores and loadings biplot (behaviour of the objects and weight of the original variables visualized in the standardized space of PCs) (Shaw, 2009;Olawoyin et al, 2014;Giovenzana et al, 2019).…”