Rapid determination of the shell content in cocoa products using FT-NIR spectroscopy and chemometrics

The determination of the cocoa shell content is of interest because a high shell content causes a reduction in the quality of cocoa products. Consequently, the aim of the present study was the development of a routinely applicable method for the quantitation of shell material in cocoa nibs. For this, 51 fermented cocoa samples of different varieties from 14 cocoa growing countries covering the crop years 2012-2017 were acquired. Admixtures of cocoa nibs with shell material were prepared in a range of 0-20% cocoa shell and subsequently analysed by Fourier transform near-infrared spectroscopy (FT-NIRS). Support vector machine regression models were created, which enabled the prediction of the cocoa shell content in a mixing ratio range of 0-20% with an RMSE of 2.05% and a R² of 0.88 and in a range of 0-10% with an RMSE of 1.70% and a R² of 0.72. This predictive capability suggests that the presented method is suitable for rapid determination of cocoa shell content in cocoa nibs. In addition, it was demonstrated that the method is applicable to other relevant cocoa matrices, as the prediction of the shell content of several industrial cocoa masses by the FT-NIRS-based model showed good consistency with the prediction by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. This emphasizes that FT-NIRS combined with chemometrics has great potential for the determination of cocoa shell content in cocoa nibs and cocoa masses in routine analysis, such as incoming inspection.