LAUSR

Rapid and simple methods to determine histamine in tuna fish have been examined. A dry extract system for infrared (DESIR) was coupled with near-infrared spectroscopy in order to obtain the absorption of histamine in tuna fish at the ppm level. The result showed that the optimal extraction solvent for preparing DESIR samples was 75% methanol and boiling water (100 °C). Calibration equations were developed and tested by independent validation set samples. The calibration equation developed from boiling water as solvent extraction was slightly better than the equation developed from 75% methanol solvent with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.79, a standard error of calibration of 2.45 ppm, a standard error of prediction of 2.94 ppm, and a bias of 0.10 ppm. Furthermore, the predicted values from both equations were not significantly different from the reference values obtained from the standard method at the 95% confidence interval. Compared to the current AOAC fluorometric official method, the proposed technique simplified and reduced the preparation time.