Application of a portable electronic nose system to assess the freshness of Moroccan sardines

In this paper, we propose the investigation and the realisation of an electronic nose system able to evaluate fish freshness in real-time, under the constraints of being suitable for miniaturization and portability. Six tin oxide based Taguchi gas sensors are used to analyse sardine samples stored at 4 °C. A dedicated real-time data acquisition system based on a microcontroller and portable computer have been designed and constructed for this application. Principal component analysis (PCA) and support vector machines (SVMs) results show that the system is able to assess the freshness of sardines stored at 4 °C.