Spectral reconstruction of multichannel fluorescence for rapid assessment of TVB-N in meat products

Rapid and accurate quantification of total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N) is required to evaluate the freshness of meat products. In this study, a multichannel fluorescence sensing system was constructed by means of two pH-responsive fluorescent dyes and four amine-specific recognition metal nanoclusters as recognition elements. Besides, a continuous fluorescence spectrum was reconstructed by the six-channel fluorescence spectra based on the characteristic response of TVB-N molecules. And a chemometric model was used to establish the quantitative relationship between the reconstructed spectra and TVB-N values. The results indicated that the LS-SVM model exhibited the best performance ( R 2  = 0.951, RMSE  = 1.04 mg/100 g). Moreover, this approach enabled accurate detection of TVB-N through simple sample pretreatment in complex food matrices and was successfully applied to the freshness monitoring of beef, chicken, sea bass, and shrimp. This is of great benefit to the rapid and accurate detection of freshness of meat products in cold-chain.