**2.1 Infrared spectroscopy**

*Innovation in the Food Sector Through the Valorization of Food and Agro-Food By-Products*

enabling early detection of spoilage to help minimize food waste.

perishability is largely to blame.

globally with between 30% and 35% loss in most regions of the world [2]. Seafood's

A major goal to improve the overall valorization of food and reduce agro-food waste or diversion to by-products is earlier and rapid detection of spoilage. Like medical evaluations for disease, early detection can lead to quicker response from manufacturers or consumers to increase the shelf life of food products. Microbiologists and food scientists have developed a variety of methods to detect surface microbials and pathogenic microorganisms including culturing and colonycounting methods, polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based amplification for DNA analysis, immunoassay analysis, chromatography, and mass spectrometry [3, 4]. Unfortunately, these techniques have limited versatility and restrictive methodologies that are not practical with on-site and on-demand food quality and safety control [3–5]. However, spectroscopic technologies have shown great promise for

Another problem affecting consumers and contributing to global food waste is the lack of transparent pricing for food products as a function of shelf life. Alongside government and industry regulation, intelligent dynamic pricing based on projected shelf life at retail and other upstream points along the supply chain can encourage efforts to reduce waste. This requires new tools for tracking food products at all points along the supply chain. These tools must be easy to incorporate, objective, verifiable, and provide data on quality, provenance, and freshness. A pioneer in the development of food quality and traceability technologies, SafetySpect is developing a new handheld quality, adulteration, and traceability (QAT) scanner to address many of these issues. Utilizing hyperspectral multi-mode technology to provide species identification and direct measurements of freshness/ spoilage in a handheld device can address challenges of waste and mislabeling. In seafood and meat processing, distribution, and storage supply chains in developed and developing economies, this is likely to meaningfully decrease food waste and increase sustainable access to safe, healthy, and nutritious foods. It will also decrease costs and increase profit within supply chains by providing better attribution of liability and verification of supply contract performance. This transparency will provide incentives to upstream supply chain participants to improve operational methods that can result in the degradation of product or unnecessary,

The main approach to improving valorization and by-product management is early detection of spoilage. A common method for detecting spoilage in fish is the Torry Freshness Score [6]. This systematic scoring method was developed in the UK to provide an objective assessment of fish quality. It uses the human senses to examine specific parts of the fish. For example, an evaluator will observe gill odors, skin tension, opaqueness of the eyes, and overall smell of the fish and provide a freshness rating between 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest). However, this manual approach to evaluating fish samples is time consuming and may be more susceptible to evaluator bias or human error. This motivates the development of technologies that enable

Spectroscopic approaches offer a robust, non-destructive means of detecting and evaluating the extent of food quality issues. In recent decades, advancements in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and micro-electro-opto-mechanical systems (MEOMS) have enabled the development of miniaturized spectroscopic devices that can be used for analysis at all points along the food supply chain, from farm fields to distribution centers to retail markets. Hyperspectral imaging (HSI)

rapid evaluation of fish quality with minimal human interpretation.

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accelerated spoilage.

**1.1 Current trends for examining fish quality**

One of the most common approaches used for quality control of food products involves the analysis of vibrational spectra via infrared spectroscopy. The spectral peaks and valleys formed by the fundamental vibrational modes (and their harmonics) of key structures within organic molecules can be used to detect the presence of abnormalities or measure the abundances of specific chemical components. The near infrared (NIR) and mid-infrared (MIR) spectral regions are of high interest in food analysis applications.
