Potential of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) for prediction of acrylamide formation in French fries in the potato breeding process

Breeding goals of potatoes for deep-frying purposes include high starch contents, good suitability for long-term storage, and low tendency to form reducing sugars as acrylamide precursors. Due to the extensive number of samples, an accurate analysis of acrylamide in French fries and its precursors in tubers is difficult to implement in the breeding process. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the suitability of NIRS measurements after minimal sample processing for the prediction of reducing sugar contents in the tubers or acrylamide contents in French fries. An external validation with more than 650 samples consisting of 194 potato genotypes resulted in a prediction accuracy of 51 % for acrylamide and 76 % for reducing sugar content. RPD values of less than 1.5 for acrylamide and between 1.64 and 2.23 for reducing sugar prediction rendered low medium to medium model quality. Nevertheless, acrylamide prediction models based on NIRS measurement of mashed tubers categorised over 80 % of unknown samples correctly as being below or above the European threshold value, indicating suitability as rapid test procedure in the breeding process.