Application of artificial neural engineering and regression models for forecasting shelf life of instant coffee drink

Coffee as beverage is prepared from the roasted seeds (beans) of the coffee plant. Coffee is the second most important product in the international market in terms of volume trade and the most important in terms of value. Artificial neural engineering and regression models were developed to predict shelf life of instant coffee drink. Colour and appearance, flavour, viscosity and sediment were used as input parameters. Overall acceptability was used as output parameter. The dataset consisted of experimentally developed 50 observations. The dataset was divided into two disjoint subsets, namely, training set containing 40 observations (80% of total observations) and test set comprising of 10 obs ervations (20% of total observations). The network was trained with 500 epochs. Neural network toolbox under Matlab 7.0 software was used for training the models. From the investigation it was revealed that multiple linear regression model was superior over radial basis model for forecasting shelf life of instant coffee drink.