Application of modern spectroscopic technologies in the analysis of plant nutritional quality

In current stage food security has been considering both the total food amount and the food quality instead of formally mainly considering the total food amount, therefore, the society pay more attention to the analysis of food quality. The conventional plant nutritional analysis was laboratory-based chemical analysis, which was time- and cost-consuming as well as high labor intensity. Thus, the routine methods are difficult to meet the requirement of mass plant nutritional information deprived from food quality. Correspondingly, spectroscopic methods, including ultraviolet, visible, infrared, fluorescence and Raman etc., have been widely used for in situ rapid obtaining of food quality parameters in a large variety of plants including crops, vegetable and fruit as well as some Chinese medicine plants. Furthermore, some subjective sensory properties can be characterized by spectroscopic methods in a more objective way. Infrared photoacoustic spectroscopy and laser induced breakdown spectroscopy have been applied in various fields, and demonstrated great potential in plant nutritional analysis. Multivariate calibration and validation were needed since spectral analysis involved numerous data points, which were well supported by chemometrical methods and computer technology, and highlights will focused on the in situ rapid obtaining of food quality parameters based on plant nutrition knowledge combining the platforms of internet and cloud technology as well as intelligent terminals.