Nondestructive Detection of Pesticide Residue (Chlorpyrifos) on Bok Choi (Brassica rapa subsp. Chinensis) Using a Portable NIR Spectrometer Coupled with a Machine Learning Approach

The contamination of agricultural products, such as vegetables, by pesticide residues has received considerable attention worldwide. Pesticide residue on vegetables constitutes a potential risk to human health. In this study, we combined near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy with machine learning algorithms, including partial least-squares discrimination analysis (PLS-DA), support vector machine (SVM), artificial neural network (ANN), and principal component artificial neural network (PC-ANN), to identify pesticide residue (chlorpyrifos) on bok choi. The experimental set comprised 120 bok choi samples obtained from two small greenhouses that were cultivated separately. We performed pesticide and pesticide-free treatments with 60 samples in each group. The vegetables for pesticide treatment were fortified with 2 mL/L of chlorpyrifos 40% EC residue. We connected a commercial portable NIR spectrometer with a wavelength range of 908–1676 nm to a small single-board computer. We analyzed the pesticide residue on bok choi using UV spectrophotometry. The most accurate model correctly classified 100% of the samples used in the calibration set in terms of the content of chlorpyrifos residue on samples using SVM and PC-ANN with raw data spectra. Thus, we tested the model using an unknown dataset of 40 samples to verify the robustness of the model, which produced a satisfactory F1-score (100%). We concluded that the proposed portable NIR spectrometer coupled with machine learning approaches (PLS-DA, SVM, and PC-ANN) is appropriate for the detection of chlorpyrifos residue on bok choi.