Assessing the Levels of Robusta and Arabica in Roasted Ground Coffee Using NIR Hyperspectral Imaging and FTIR Spectroscopy

It has been reported that some brands of roasted ground coffee, whose ingredients are labeled as 100% Arabica coffee, may also contain the cheaper Robusta coffee. Thus, the objective of this research was to test whether near-infrared spectroscopy hyperspectral imaging (NIR-HSI) or Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIRs) could be used to test whether samples of coffee were pure Arabica or whether they contained Robusta, and if so, what were the levels of Robusta they contained. Qualitative models of both the NIR-HSI and FTIRs techniques were established with support vector machine classification (SVMC). Results showed that the highest levels of accuracy in the prediction set were 98.04 and 97.06%, respectively. Quantitative models of both techniques for predicting the concentration of Robusta in the samples of Arabica with Robusta were established using support vector machine regression (SVMR), which gave the highest levels of accuracy in the prediction set with a coefficient of determination for prediction (R(p)(2)) of 0.964 and 0.956 and root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) of 5.47 and 6.07%, respectively. It was therefore concluded that the results showed that both techniques (NIR-HSI and FTIRs) have the potential for use in the inspection of roasted ground coffee to classify and determine the respective levels of Arabica and Robusta within the mixture.