Explainable artificial intelligence and microbiome data for food geographical origin: the Mozzarella di Bufala...

Identifying the origin of a food product holds paramount importance in ensuring food safety, quality, and authenticity. Knowing where a food item comes from provides crucial information about its production methods, handling practices, and potential exposure to contaminants. Machine learning techniques play a pivotal role in this process by enabling the analysis of complex data sets to uncover patterns and associations that can reveal the geographical source of a food item. This study aims to investigate the potential use of explainable artificial intelligence for identifying the food origin. The case of study of Mozzarella di Bufala Campana PDO has been considered by examining the composition of the microbiota in each samples. Three different supervised machine learning algorithms have been compared and the best classifier model is represented by Random Forest with an Area Under the Curve (AUC) value of 0.93 and the top accuracy of 0.87. Machine learning models effectively classify origin, offering innovative ways to authenticate regional products and support local economies. Further research can explore microbiota analysis and extend applicability to diverse food products and contexts for enhanced accuracy and broader impact.