Estimating cocoa bean parameters by FT-NIRS and chemometrics analysis.

Rapid analysis of cocoa beans is an important activity for quality assurance and control investigations. In this study, Fourier transform near infrared spectroscopy (FT-NIRS) and chemometric techniques were attempted to estimate cocoa bean quality categories, pH and fermentation index (FI). The performances of the models were optimised by cross-validation and examined by identification rate (%), correlation coefficient (Rpre) and root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) in the prediction set. The optimal identification model by back propagation artificial neural network (BPANN) was 99.73% at 5 principal components. The efficient variable selection model derived by synergy interval back propagation artificial neural network regression (Si-BPANNR) was superior for pH and FI estimation. Si-BPANNR model for pH was Rpre=0.98 and RMSEP=0.06, while for FI was Rpre=0.98 and RMSEP=0.05. The results demonstrated that FT-NIRS together with BPANN and Si-BPANNR model could successfully be used for cocoa beans examination.