Shelf-life assessment of fresh-cut salad by hyperspectral imaging

Fresh-cut products are very appreciated by consumers because they are a source of nutrients and antioxidant compounds. However, they are not stable over time due to metabolic processes during pre- and post-harvest phases which cause a variation in nutritional value, appearance, and taste. Moreover, this degradation is enhanced by the operations of the production process (e.g., washing, peeling, cutting), and it results in a shorter shelf-life of the final product and in an increase of food wastes. Therefore, rapid and non-destructive methods to assess the decay of fresh-cut products should be developed and introduced along the distribution chain. In recent years, the application of hyperspectral imaging (HSI) on fresh-cut products has increased, showing its usefulness as a tool for both quality and safety assessment of these products. As a single device is sometimes insufficient to cover each important points of the supply chain that companies need to monitor, and the costs for distributed systems cannot be affordable, research is moving towards the development of hyperspectral solutions that are cost-effective. As a result, a cost-effective HSI camera protype was built using mainly components with affordable costs and applied in controlled lab-scale conditions for a first trial to assess the shelf-life of fresh-cut salad from purchase up to and beyond the expiry date through the packaging. This type of device can be applied by operators and retails as a support tool for the management of packaged products’ flows, in order to reduce wastes and maximize the transparency and consumer loyalty.