Food, beverages and agricultural applications

This chapter provides an overview of the flow methods described for the analysis of food, beverage, and agricultural samples. A beverage is a drink specifically prepared for human consumption, other than water, such as alcoholic drinks, coffee, fruit juices, and tea. The evolution of flow-injection application to food analysis is described along with distribution by commodity. Some of the analytical features of flow methods for alcoholic beverages, meat, and fish products are tabulated. The analytes illustrate the dual role that flow-based methods have in food analysis. These include flow systems devised for routine analysis based on well-established methods. However, flow systems are also applied to novel analytical tasks, such as the determination of analytes related to sensory properties or to characteristics that contribute to a value-added product. Modern agricultural economies are highly dependent on the use of pesticides. A group of key analytes of interest in monitoring food safety is the antimicrobial agents. The evaluation of freshness and the quality of meat and fish products is based on sensorial evaluation. The application of flow systems to the determination of parameters can be correlated to astringency, bitterness, body, and smoothness.