Artificial neural network as the tool in prediction rheological features of raw minced meat

Background. The aim of the study was to elaborate a method of modelling and forecasting rheological features which could be applied to raw minced meat at the stage of mixture preparation with a given ingredient composition. Material and methods. The investigated material contained pork and beef meat, pork fat, fat substitutes, ice and curing mixture in various proportions. Seven texture parameters were measured for each sample of raw minced meat. The data obtained were processed using the artificial neural network module in Statistica 9.0 software. Results. The model that reached the lowest training error was a multi-layer perceptron MLP with three neural layers and architecture 7:7-11-7:7. Correlation coefficients between the experimental and calculated values in training, verification and testing subsets were similar and rather high (around 0.65) which indicated good network performance. Conclusion. High percentage of the total variance explained in PCA analysis (73.5%) indicated that the percentage composition of raw minced meat can be successfully used in the prediction of its rheological features. Statistical analysis of the results revealed, that artificial neural network model is able to predict rheological parameters and thus a complete texture profile of raw minced meat.