Determining Irradiation Dose in Potato Tubers During Storage Using Reaction-Based Pattern Recognition Method

Area of Science:

• Food science
• Analytical chemistry
• Radiation chemistry

Background:

• Food irradiation extends shelf life and controls pests but requires accurate dose monitoring.
• Current dose monitoring methods are expensive, laborious, and may miss low doses.
• Previous chemical fingerprinting methods were limited to freshly irradiated samples.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the feasibility of a chemical fingerprinting method for determining irradiation dose magnitude in raw potatoes after storage.
• To assess the method's accuracy and reliability over time and at different dose levels.

Main Methods:

• Raw potato tubers were subjected to different irradiation doses (0, 100, 1000 Gy).
• Water extracts were analyzed using oxidation-reduction and aggregation reactions in 96-well plates.
• Reaction rates were tracked via absorbance and fluorescence, with chemometric analysis (SoftMax regression, LDA, PLS-DA).

Main Results:

• The method successfully distinguished between dose orders of magnitude (0, 100, 1000 Gy) after 0, 2, and 6 days of storage at 4 °C.
• Accuracy of dose recognition reached at least 97% on day 6 using SoftMax regression or LDA.
• Partial least square-discriminant analysis confidently distinguished irradiated from non-irradiated samples.

Conclusions:

• The reaction-based chemical fingerprinting method is feasible for assessing irradiation dose magnitude in stored potato tubers.
• This simple, rapid, and equipment-light approach provides a viable alternative for post-treatment dose monitoring in food irradiation.