Shelf-life assessment and forecast in retail fresh hake

• Main Author: Miriam R. Garcia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2014-05-01
• Series: Frontiers in Marine Science
• Subjects: predictive microbiology; optimal experimental design; Fish Shelf-life; Quality Index method; Retail Fresh Hake; Core Predictions
• Online Access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/conf.fmars.2014.02.00180/full

Fish quality has a direct impact on market price and its accurate assessment and prediction is of main importance to prevent food wastage due to extremely conservative product shelf-life estimations. In this work we present a general methodology to derive predictive models of fish freshness under different storage conditions. The approach focuses in finding growth models of specific spoilage micro-organisms in hake sufficiently informative to estimate two common quality market indexes. In order to get enough predictive capabilities, we make use of Optimal Experimental Design and analyze the statistics associated with the predictions due to fish variability. As a result, both quality indexes and their variability can be estimated under different temperature profiles. Although the methodology here presented has been applied and validated in hake, it is sufficiently general to be used in other fish species and under different stress variables. In addition, the parameters found for this case are robust enough to predict quality in conditions not used during the model calibration, such as for example hake captured with a different commercial fishing technique.