Prediction of Phytochemical Composition, In Vitro Antioxidant Activity and Individual Phenolic Compounds of Common Beans Using MIR and NIR Spectroscopy

The aim of the present study was the evaluation of the performance of analytical models developed with both mid-infrared (MIR) and near-infrared (NIR) spectral data, to assess the phytochemical composition and in vitro antioxidant activity, besides individual phenolic compounds determined by HPLC-DAD, of flours from 21 distinct cultivars of Phaseolus vulgaris L . Partial least squares (PLS) regression was used to develop the analytical models, which were validated with an external set of samples. In MIR, the best prediction models were developed using the first derivative after normalization ( R 2 c 0.86–0.99 and R 2 v 0.75–0.94), while for NIR, the use of the first derivative of the spectra after normalization led to the best results ( R 2 c 0.94–0.99 and R 2 v 0.85–0.97). Both techniques allowed to ascertain the prediction models to ensure an accurate evaluation of the individual phenolic compounds in concentrations as low as ~ 5 μg g −1 and in vitro antioxidant capacity until the lower limit of 2.1 μmol g −1 dw. Therefore, this study revealed that the spectroscopic methodologies may represent an accurate and rapid method for quantification of phytochemical composition, in vitro antioxidant activity and individual phenolic compounds of bean flours; thus, their applicability in the food industry is representing an alternative to the traditional approaches.