Prediction of Total Dietary Fiber by Near-Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy in Cereal Products Containing High Sugar and Crystalline Sugar

Crystalline sugar has unique spectral characteristics that influence the near-infrared (NIR) region of the spectrum often used to assess product composition. The current study investigated the potential of expanding an existing NIR spectroscopic calibration for the prediction of total dietary fiber in cereal products to include products with high sugar and crystalline sugar content. Using AOAC Procedure 991.43 as the reference method, an NIRSystems monochromator and ISI software for scanning and data analysis, and a selection algorithm to select representative high-sugar samples, a sugar-expanded partial least-squares model (n = 100) was developed for prediction of dietary fiber. The standard error of cross-validation, R2, standard error of performance (n = 45 independent validation samples), and r2 were 1.88%, 0.98, 1.40%, and 0.99, respectively. The NIR model for prediction of total dietary fiber in cereal products was, thus, expanded to include samples with high sugar and crystalline sugar content. Key...