LAUSR

ABSTRACT A demerit score-based fish quality index (FQI) has been developed to assess the quality/freshness of fresh fish by considering five general characteristics in the demerit score like appearance of fish outer surface, fish eye, gills, belly and vent. These characteristics were normalized in the range 0 to 1, where 0 represents excellent/best quality of the characteristic and 1 represents bad/worst quality of the characteristic since the quality assessment is based on the demerit score. The value 0 of FQI represents fish with excellent/best quality, and 1 represents fish with bad/worst quality. A theoretical model with auto-correlated errors was also developed to estimate the shelf life for a predicted value of FQI score. The developed FQI was validated with real time data on milk fish (Chanos chanos) stored in chilled condition. It was found that appearance of outer surface and fish gills were the important quality attributes affecting the quality/freshness of milk fish.