Non-destructive Microwave Water Activity Meter for Dry-Cured Sausages

Water activity is a key control parameter in the production of dry-cured meat products. Today, it is under-utilised due to the destructive and labour intensive nature of commercially available meters. This article presents results from a novel non-destructive microwave-based water activity meter, which demonstrates a strong agreement <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$(R^{2}=0.9564)$</tex> with a widely used commercial reference method. While the reported device error (100% error of 0.0173 and 95% error of 0.0076) is higher than reported for the reference method (0.003), the measurement time is significantly faster; <10 seconds versus ca. 5–10 minutes.