Application of near infrared spectroscopy for the rapid determination of antioxidant activity of bamboo leaf extract

This study was carried out to evaluate the feasibility of using near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy for determining three antioxidant activity indices of the extract of bamboo leaves (EBL), specifically 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH), ferric reducing/antioxidant power (FRAP), and 2,2′-azinobis-(3-ethylbenz-thiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS). Four different linear and nonlinear regressions tools (i.e. partial least squares (PLS), multiple linear regression (MLR), back-propagation artificial neural network (BP-ANN), and least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM)) were systemically studied and compared in developing the model. Variable selection was first time considered in applying the NIR spectroscopic technique for the determination of antioxidant activity of food or agricultural products. On the basis of these selected optimum wavelengths, the established MLR calibration models provided the coefficients of correlation with a prediction (r_pre) of 0.863, 0.910, and 0.966 for DPPH, FARP, and ABTS determinations, respectively. The overall results of this study revealed the potential for use of NIR spectroscopy as an objective and non-destructive method to inspect the antioxidant activity of EBL.