Detection of Frozen-Thawed Cycles for Frozen Tilapia (Oreochromis) Fillets Using Near Infrared Spectroscopy

Due to the ambient temperature fluctuation during the process of storage, transportation, and sale, frozen fillets may go through frozen-thawed cycles that result in quality changes. In order to detect the frozen-thawed cycles in frozen tilapia fillets, near infrared spectroscopy was applied. The thawing loss, cooking loss, moisture content, total volatile basic nitrogen, and texture profile of fillets in seven frozen-thawed cycles were analyzed to reflect the change of quality. A total of 60 fillets were used to collect the spectra on both dorsal and belly flesh in frozen and thawed state from the first to the seventh cycle. The results showed that there is a better discrimination among the once and the repeated frozen-thawed samples in the frozen state than the thawed state. Frozen samples were still conducive to the differentiation and had higher classification accuracy, ranging from 80% to 93.33%. Dorsal flesh was more beneficial for the differentiation than belly flesh and had the highest accuracy, ranging from 86.67% to 93.33% in the frozen state. These results showed that the nondestructive and fast detection of repeated frozen-thawed cycles in frozen tilapia fillets can be accomplished by near infrared spectroscopy, which has enormous potential for practical application.