Present and future of expert systems in food analysis

This paper presents an overview of the most relevant contributions in the field of expert system (ES) applications in chemical analysis of foods, along with a critical discussion of future, would-be developments. It illustrates the possibilities offered as well as the fact that quality control laboratories should be aware of the power of artificial intelligence that modem computer technology affords. It is worth noting that the applications described are straightforward with a certain versatility and can, therefore, be implemented for other analytes and/or food samples. Special attention is devoted to the promising distributed knowledge-based systems due to their potential advantages over the existing centralized approaches, as inferred from a recent example of application to the on-line monitoring of some key chemical parameters in the course of a food production process. Short and middle term predictions concerning the potential of ES in food analysis are also made. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.