Prediction of sugars and acids in Chinese rice wine by mid-infrared spectroscopy

The use of Fourier transform mid-infrared spectroscopy (FT-MIR) for the rapid determination of sugars and acids in Chinese rice wine was presented in this study. Calibration models were developed by partial least squares regression (PLSR) for eleven parameters related to sugar content and acidity-namely, total sugar, non-sugar solid, glucose, maltose, isomaltotriose, isomaltose, panose, total acid, amino acid nitrogen, pH and lactic acid. In the calibration step, most of the parameters were accurately determined, obtaining regression coefficients of calibration (rcal) ranging from 0.821 to 0.991. In validation, regression coefficients of validation (rval) obtained for most parameters were higher than 0.85. Unsatisfactory predictions were obtained for isomaltotriose and isomaltose with rval being 0.488 and 0.716, respectively. The residual predictive deviation (RPD) values were also higher than or close to 2.0 for all the parameters except for isomaltose and isomaltotriose. Overall, the results indicate that MIR spectroscopy can be applied to the quality determination of Chinese rice wine.