Using an optimal CC-PLSR-RBFNN model and NIR spectroscopy for the starch content determination in corn.

Corn starch is an important material which has been traditionally used in the fields of food and chemical industry. In order to enhance the rapidness and reliability of the determination for starch content in corn, a methodology is proposed in this work, using an optimal CC-PLSR-RBFNN calibration model and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. The proposed model was developed based on the optimal selection of crucial parameters and the combination of correlation coefficient method (CC), partial least squares regression (PLSR) and radial basis function neural network (RBFNN). To test the performance of the model, a standard NIR spectroscopy data set was introduced, containing spectral information and chemical reference measurements of 80 corn samples. For comparison, several other models based on the identical data set were also briefly discussed. In this process, the root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) and coefficient of determination (Rp) in the prediction set were used to make evaluations. As a result, the proposed model presented the best predictive performance with the smallest RMSEP (0.0497%) and the highest Rp (0.9968). Therefore, the proposed method combining NIR spectroscopy with the optimal CC-PLSR-RBFNN model can be helpful to determine starch content in corn.