Recent advances in non-invasive techniques for assessing food quality: Applications and innovations

The global concern for ensuring the safety and authenticity of high-quality food necessitates continuous advancements in food assessment technologies. While conventional methods of food assessment are accurate and precise, they are also laborious, destructive, time-consuming, energy-intensive, chemical-demanding, and less eco-friendly. Their reliability diminishes when dealing with large numbers of food samples. This chapter explores recent advances in non-invasive technologies for food quality assessment, including spectroscopy, optical imaging, and e-sensors. Enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI), these technologies have shown remarkable capabilities in rapid and accurate food identification, authentication, physical appraisal, early disease detection, chemical analysis, and biochemical evaluation. As a result, non-invasive technology holds the potential to revolutionize food quality assessment and assure food safety at every stage of the food supply chain.