Measurement of fat distribution in albacore by a conventional method and nondestructive determination of fat content in the whole body of albacore by near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy were performed. Fat content of the central portion of the body was well correlated with that of the whole body. As a result of multiple linear regression based on 2nd derivative spectra of the central portion of the body and fat content in the whole body，a good calibration equation having d2 log (1/R) at fat band of 926 nm as the first variable was obtained. The RPD* value was 2.2. It was concluded that NIR spectroscopy enables determining the fat content of the whole body of albacore by measuring the NIR spectra of the central portion of the body with an interactance probe.
*RPD is the ratio of standard deviation of reference data in prediction set to SEP.