Rapid Determination of Total Volatile Acid and Base in Tobacco with NIR Spectroscopy

The near infrared (NIR) spectra of 730 representative tobacco samples were measured with Fourier transform near infrared spectroscopy. The calibration models between spectral data and the contents of total volatile base (TVB) or total volatile acid (TVA) of tobacco samples were established by partial least square regression and verified with a set of 50 tobacco samples. The root mean square errors of prediction (RMSEP) for TVB and TVA were 0.020 and 0.009, respectively; the relative standard deviations of TVB and TVA were 1.120% and 0.919% respectively for the 50 validation samples.