Rice fraud is one of the common threats to the rice industry. Conventional methods to detect rice adulteration are costly, time-consuming, and tedious. This study proposes the quantitative prediction of rice adulteration levels measured through the packaging using a handheld near-infrared (NIR) spectrometer and electronic nose (e-nose) sensors measuring directly on samples and paired with machine learning (ML) algorithms. For these purposes, the samples were prepared by mixing rice at different ratios from 0% to 100% with a 10% increment based on the rice's weight, consisting of (i) rice from different origins, (ii) premium with regular rice, (iii) aromatic with non-aromatic, and (iv) organic with non-organic rice. Multivariate data analysis was used to explore the sample distribution and its relationship with the e-nose sensors for parameter engineering before ML modeling. Artificial neural network (ANN) algorithms were used to predict the adulteration levels of the rice samples using the e-nose sensors and NIR absorbances readings as inputs. Results showed that both sensing devices could detect rice adulteration at different mixing ratios with high correlation coefficients through direct (e-nose; R = 0.94–0.98) and noninvasive measurement through the packaging (NIR; R = 0.95–0.98). The proposed method uses lowcost, rapid, and portable sensing devices coupled with ML that have shown to be reliable and accurate to increase the efficiency of rice fraud detection through the rice production chain.
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