Non-destructive characterization of pulse flours—A review

The consumption of plant-based proteins sourced from pulses is sustainable from the perspective of agriculture, environment, food security, and nutrition. Increased incorporation of high-quality pulse ingredients into foods such as pasta and baked goods is poised to produce refined food products to satisfy consumer demand. However, a better understanding of pulse milling processes is required to optimize the blending of pulse flours with wheat flour and other traditional ingredients. A thorough review of the state-of-the-art on pulse flour quality characterization reveals that research is required to elucidate the relationships between the micro- and nanoscale structures of these flours and their milling-dependent properties, such as hydration, starch and protein quality, components separation, and particle size distribution. With advances in synchrotron-enabled material characterization techniques, there exist a few options that have the potential to fill knowledge gaps. To this end, we conducted a comprehensive review of four high-resolution nondestructive techniques (i.e., scanning electron microscopy, synchrotron X-ray microtomography, synchrotron small-angle X-ray scattering, and Fourier-transformed infrared spectromicroscopy) and a comparison of their suitability for characterizing pulse flours. Our detailed synthesis of the literature concludes that a multimodal approach to fully characterize pulse flours will be vital to predicting their end-use suitability. A holistic characterization will help optimize and standardize the milling methods, pretreatments, and post-processing of pulse flours. Millers/processors will benefit by having a range of well-understood pulse flour fractions to incorporate into food formulations.     

Assessment of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Fusarium</Emphasis> and Deoxynivalenol Using Optical Methods

Fusarium is a widely spread fungus that affects small cereal grains mostly during flowering and thrives in warm, moist conditions. Fusarium head blight diminishes the nutritional, physical, and chemical qualities of the grains, which consequently lowers their market value. Mycotoxins are toxic, secondary metabolites produced during the fungal infection process and are not eliminated by industrial processes such as milling, baking, malting, or ethanol production. Above certain levels, mycotoxins can have toxic effects in humans and livestock. Therefore, Fusarium monitoring is extremely important to avoid potential mycotoxin production. Optical techniques are recognized as one of the best ways to assess a batch of samples in a fast and non-destructive way. Previous reviews on Fusarium assessment have provided an overview of all the possible methods for its detection, while others list Fusarium as one among several known plant diseases and provide some applicable methods for safety inspection of food. This paper reviews current techniques for grain quality assessment, particularly a thorough appraisal of the optical methods and classification algorithms applied to identify and determine the infection level of Fusarium spp. Hence, this work highlights the latest literature concerning Fusarium and deoxynivalenol identification and currently used methods to determine levels of infection.     

Applications of imaging systems for the assessment of quality characteristics of bread and other baked goods: A review

One of the most widely researched topics in the food industry is bread quality analysis. Different techniques have been developed to assess the quality characteristics of bakery products. However, in the last few decades, the advancement in sensor and computational technologies has increased the use of computer vision to analyze food quality (e.g., bakery products). Despite a large number of publications on the application of imaging methods in the bakery industry, comprehensive reviews detailing the use of conventional analytical techniques and imaging methods for the quality analysis of baked goods are limited. Therefore, this review aims to critically analyze the conventional methods and explore the potential of imaging techniques for the quality assessment of baked products. This review provides an in-depth assessment of the different conventional techniques used for the quality analysis of baked goods which include methods to record the physical characteristics of bread and analyze its quality, sensory-based methods, nutritional-based methods, and the use of dough rheological data for end-product quality prediction. Furthermore, an overview of the image processing stages is presented herein. We also discuss, comprehensively, the applications of imaging techniques for assessing the quality of bread and other baked goods. These applications include studying and predicting baked goods' quality characteristics (color, texture, size, and shape) and classifying them based on these features. The limitations of both conventional techniques (e.g., destructive, laborious, error-prone, and expensive) and imaging methods (e.g., illumination, humidity, and noise) and the future direction of the use of imaging methods for quality analysis of bakery products are discussed.     

Significance of Hall effect on heat and mass transport of titanium alloy-water-based nanofluid flow past a vertical surface with IMF effect

In this mathematical presentation, we examined the significance of Hall current on MHD buoyancy-driven boundary layer flow of a Ti₆Al₄V-H₂O based nanofluid past a vertical surface implanted in a uniform permeable region. The vertical surface is considered to be magnetized and induced magnetic field (IMF) impacts are also considered. The nondimensional flow model is solved with the assistance of the two-term perturbation scheme. Various results are obtained by numerical computation for different significant parameters. These results are presented and analyzed in graphical and tabular form. In the boundary layer domain, the transpiration velocity across the surface tends to diminish the main flow, IMF along the main flow, fluid temperature, and concentration. It is remarkably noted that IMF along the main flow grows for incrementing values of volume fraction coefficient of nanofluid. In the magnetic boundary layer domain, the main flow and IMF along the main flow grow with Hall current. Furthermore, it is seen that for the progressing values of magnetic Prandtl number, the main flow reduces while normal flow and IMF along the main flow is induced in the boundary layer domain.     

Wide Bandgap Phase Change Material Tuned Visible Photonics

Light strongly interacts with structures that are of a similar scale to its wavelength, typically nanoscale features for light in the visible spectrum. However, the optical response of these nanostructures is usually fixed during the fabrication. Phase change materials offer a way to tune the properties of these structures in nanoseconds. Until now, phase change active photonics has used materials that strongly absorb visible light, which limits their application in the visible spectrum. In contrast, Sb₂S₃ is an underexplored phase change material with a bandgap that can be tuned in the visible spectrum from 2.0 to 1.7 eV. This tuneable bandgap is deliberately coupled to an optical resonator such that it responds dramatically in the visible spectrum to Sb₂S₃ reversible structural phase transitions. It is shown that this optical response can be triggered both optically and electrically. High‐speed reprogrammable Sb₂S₃ based photonic devices, such as those reported here, are likely to have wide applications in future intelligent photonic systems, holographic displays, and microspectrometers.     

Modelling and parameter estimation for fly-by-wire aircraft/control systems

This paper covers in detail the issues related to parameter estimation of open loop dynamics of fly-by-wire aircraft/control systems from closed loop data. System identifiability aspects in the closed loop and the effect of various feedback types on the parameterisation of the system matrices are reviewed. The methods commonly employed for the detection of collinearity in the data are discussed. A brief discussion of the common methods used for analysis of unstable/augmented aircraft are given. Also, controller information based identification method (CIBIM), which utilises knowledge of the controller in the analysis, is presented. The discussion is followed by numerical results of application of the techniques to simulated data.     

Near‐infrared transmittance spectroscopy: a potential tool for non‐destructive determination of oil content in groundnuts

The oil content of 64 samples of groundnut kernels, representing 47 genotypes, was determined by the conventional Soxhlet extraction procedure (Oil^SOX). The values of Oil^SOX ranged from 403 to 536 g kg⁻¹. The optical densities (ODs) of these samples were determined at 12 wavelengths (918, 928, 940, 950, 968, 975, 985, 998, 1010, 1023, 1037 and 1045 nm) in the near‐infrared (NIR) region using a food composition analyser (essentially a filter‐based NIR spectrophotometer). The instrument also recorded the temperatures of the sample (Temp^S) and the air (Temp^A) surrounding it. A sample holder (75 mm × 150 mm; optical path length 25 mm) was used for optical density measurement. The data obtained were subjected to multiple linear regression analysis using the ODs at 12 wavelengths, Temp^S and Temp^A as the independent (predictor) variables, and Oil^SOX as the dependent variable. The multiple linear regression equation comprising 14 predictors showed a significant relationship between predicted values of oil content (Oil^NIR) and Oil^SOX. The standard error of calibration and the coefficient of determination for calibration (R) were 3.54 and 0.821 respectively, while the standard error of prediction and the coefficient of determination for prediction were 5.82 and 0.865 respectively. The ratio of standard error of calibration and standard error of prediction was 0.608. The differences between Oil^SOX and Oil^NIR were less than ± 20 g kg⁻¹ for samples having oil contents in the range from 480 to 510 g kg⁻¹. However, for samples having Oil^SOX lower than 480 g kg⁻¹ or higher than 510 g kg⁻¹, differences greater than ± 20 g kg⁻¹ were observed. There exists scope for further refining the regression equation by using a larger number of samples for generating optical data. The results demonstrated the potential of NIR transmittance spectroscopy for determining the oil content of groundnuts in a non‐destructive manner. © 2000 Society of Chemical Industry     

Photocatalytic reduction of some alkali carbonates in the presence of methylene blue

The photoreduction of aqueous sodium and potassium carbonates has been carried out in the presence of methylene blue solution (which is a photocatalyst also). The photocatalytic formation of formic acid and formaldehyde were measured spectrophotometrically using Nash reagent. The effect of variation of various parameters like pH, amount of photocatalyst (methylene blue concentration), concentration of Na₂CO₃ and K₂CO₃, light intensity, etc. on the yield of photoproducts was also investigated. A tentative mechanism for this reduction has been proposed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.