ABSTRACT
In the present paper, a total of 4,733 flue-cured tobacco samples collected from 2003 to 2012 in 17 provincial origins and 5 ecological areas were tested by near infrared spectroscopy, including the NONG(Luzhou) flavor 1,580 cartons, QING (Fen) flavor 2004 cartons and Intermediate flavor 1 149 cartons. Using projection model based on principal component and Fisher criterion (PPF), Projection analysis models of tobacco ecological regions and style characteristics were established. Reasonableness of style flavor division is illustrated by the model results of tobacco ecological areas. With the Euclidean distance between the predicted sample projection values and the mean projection values of each class in style characteristics model, a description is given for the prediction samples to quantify the extent of the style features, and their first and second close categories. Using the dispersion of projected values in model and the given threshold value, prediction results can be refined into typical NONG, NONG to Intermediate, Intermediate to NONG, typical Intermediate, Intermediate to QING, QING to Intermediate, typical QING, QING to NONG, NONG to QING, or super-model range. The model was validated by 35 tobacco samples obtained from the re-dryingprocess in 2012 with different origins and parts. This kind of analysis methods not only can achieve discriminant analysis, but also can get richer feature attribute information and provide guidance to raw tobacco processing and formulations.
