Accurate Classification of Chunmee Tea Grade Using NIR Spectroscopy and Fuzzy Maximum Uncertainty Linear Discriminant Analysis

The grade of tea is closely related to tea quality, so the identification of tea grade is an important task. In order to improve the identification capability of the tea grade system, a fuzzy maximum uncertainty linear discriminant analysis (FMLDA) methodology was proposed based on maximum uncertainty linear discriminant analysis (MLDA). Based on FMLDA, a tea grade recognition system was established for the grade recognition of Chunmee tea. The process of this system is as follows: firstly, the near-infrared (NIR) spectra of Chunmee tea were collected using a Fourier transform NIR spectrometer. Next, the spectra were preprocessed using standard normal variables (SNV). Then, direct linear discriminant analysis (DLDA), maximum uncertainty linear discriminant analysis (MLDA), and FMLDA were used for feature extraction of the spectra, respectively. Finally, the k-nearest neighbor (KNN) classifier was applied to classify the spectra. The k in KNN and the fuzzy coefficient, m, were discussed in the experiment. The experimental results showed that when k = 1 and m = 2.7 or 2.8, the accuracy of the FMLDA could reach 98.15%, which was better than the other two feature extraction methods. Therefore, FMLDA combined with NIR technology is an effective method in the identification of tea grade.