Homogeneity and stability assessment of a candidate to pumpkin seed flour reference material by means of computer vision based chemometrics assisted approach

Use of Digital Image Analysis for preliminary assessment of homogeneity and stability of a candidate for pumpkin seed flour Reference Material, using a portable image capture apparatus. [Display omitted] •Digital image analysis used in the production of new food reference material (RM).•Homogeneity curves describe an acceptance region for RM textural response.•Robust Principal Component Analysis - RPCA to search RM outliers samples.•Stability evaluation of MR candidate under different temperatures was carried out.•Continuous Level Moving Block describes the distribution of particles in the sample. This study proposes a preliminary assessment of the homogeneity and stability through digital image acquisition of a candidate for mechanically processed pumpkin seed meal reference material, exploring the concepts of homogeneity curve and the analysis of texture characteristics by Continuous-Level Moving Block through Robust Principal Component Analysis. This innovative methodology allowed us to examine the percentage of homogeneity in a set of samples, revealing an average of 41% with only one outlier in relation to the entire sample, indicating low homogeneity. In the stability study carried out after storing samples for 12 months at different temperatures, 83% of the samples were considered regular and 17% were outlier, which means that most of them were considered stable. Therefore, this methodology is useful for screening samples for homogeneity, by textural analysis, and detected non-homogeneity can be corrected in advance for quantification by standard protocols.