Determination of Condition of Mussel in the Market Using Electronic Nose Through Principal Component Analysis

Spoilage is a prevalent problem in food preparation. In general, seafood, like mussel, is more susceptible to microbial spoilage than meat. As such, a need for a system to accurately determine its condition is needed. In this paper, the researchers have developed a portable electronic nose system that determines the freshness of Asian green mussels in the markets. The device used gas sensor arrays, with MQ137 as a primary sensor to detect ammonia contamination. Mussels with its shell open was used as the sample, and its associated odor was monitored for 60 hours. After which, the correlation of pH to gas sensor reading was established. Discrimination of microbial mussel spoilage status and its analysis of the data were done using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and was able to monitor the deterioration of mussels with 95% accuracy, thereby proving its potential to be a useful system in industrial use.