Identifying environmental factors associated with tetrodotoxin contamination in bivalve mollusks using eXplainable AI

TL;DR

This study develops an explainable deep learning model to predict tetrodotoxin contamination in bivalve mollusks, identifying key environmental factors like sunlight hours, radiation, water temperature, and chloride levels as significant contributors.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel explainable AI approach for predicting TTX contamination, highlighting environmental drivers and aiding risk mitigation in seafood safety.

Findings

Sun hours and global radiation are key drivers of TTX contamination.

Water temperature and chloride levels significantly influence TTX presence.

The model effectively predicts TTX contamination based on environmental data.

Abstract

Since 2012, tetrodotoxin (TTX) has been found in seafoods such as bivalve mollusks in temperate European waters. TTX contamination leads to food safety risks and economic losses, making early prediction of TTX contamination vital to the food industry and competent authorities. Recent studies have pointed to shallow habitats and water temperature as main drivers to TTX contamination in bivalve mollusks. However, the temporal relationships between abiotic factors, biotic factors, and TTX contamination remain unexplored. We have developed an explainable, deep learning-based model to predict TTX contamination in the Dutch Zeeland estuary. Inputs for the model were meteorological and hydrological features; output was the presence or absence of TTX contamination. Results showed that the time of sunrise, time of sunset, global radiation, water temperature, and chloride concentration contributed most to TTX contamination. Thus, the effective number of sun hours, represented by day length and global radiation, was an important driver for tetrodotoxin contamination in bivalve mollusks. To conclude, our explainable deep learning model identified the aforementioned environmental factors (number of sun hours, global radiation, water temperature, and water chloride concentration) to be associated with tetrodotoxin contamination in bivalve mollusks; making our approach a valuable tool to mitigate marine toxin risks for food industry and competent authorities.