Non-destructive detection of water adulteration level in fresh milk based on combination of dielectric spectrum technology and machine learning method

To rapidly realize the identification of fresh milk for water adulteration and to predict the amount of water adulteration, this study adopts a coaxial probe and a vector network analyzer to analyze the variation laws of dielectric constant ε', dielectric loss factor ε'' and dielectric loss angle tangent tanδ in the range of 2–20 GHz under 100 frequency points. Soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA), Naive Bayes (NB), K-nearest neighbors (KNN), and support vector machine (SVM) models were built based on full dielectric spectra for qualitative testing of adulteration levels in milk. Feature variables of FDS were extracted by using the successive projections algorithm (SPA) and uninformative variables elimination (UVE). Partial least squares regression (PLSR), support vector regression (SVR), and particle swarm optimization least square support vector regression (PSO-LSSVR) models were built for quantitative testing of adulteration levels in milk. The results demonstrate an increasing trend of ε'' and tanδ with increasing frequency and a decreasing trend of ε'. The ε'-SIMCA model achieves the best effect in distinguishing water adulteration in milk, showing accuracy (ACC) of 1, Sensitivity (SNS) of 1, Specificity (SPC) precision (PRE) of 1, and an F₁-score (F₁) of 1. The tanδ-SPA-PSO-LSSVR model optimally predicts the optimal prediction effect of moisture content of milk, showing an R_P² of 0.994 and an RMSEP of 0.016 %. This study is conducive to building a more comprehensive knowledge system of water adulteration in fresh milk. Its results can provide a theoretical reference in the development of non-destructive detection instruments for natural milk.