A rapid FT-NIR method for estimation of aflatoxin B1 in red chili powder

The feasibility of measuring Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) in red chili powder was investigated by using Fourier transform near-infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy in diffuse reflectance mode combined with appropriate chemometric techniques. Aflatoxin free chili powder samples were spiked with known amount of AFB1 ranging from 15 to 500 μg/kg and used for calibration model building based on partial least squares (PLS) regression algorithm. Different spectral preprocessing methods were investigated and optimized based on the lowest values of root mean square error of cross validation (RMSECV). Spectral wavenumber range of 6900.3–4998.8 and 4902.3–3999.8 cm−1 and straight line subtraction preprocessing technique predicted AFB1 content with best accuracy with lowest RMSECV = 0.654% and maximum correlation coefficient for validation plots (R2 = 96.7). The overall results demonstrate that FT-NIR spectroscopy can be used for rapid, non destructive quantification of Aflatoxin B1 in red chili powder.