The visible/near-infrared (Vis/NIR) reflectance spectroscopy as an on-line approach to assess the pH value in fresh pork was investigated. Multivariate calibration was carried out by using chemometrics. Discrete wavelet transform was applied to de-noise the spectra scanned on-line, and several variable selection methods were proposed to simplify the calibration models. The study found that the model based on the spectra de-noised by Daubechies 6 wavelet (db6) at decomposition level 6, soft thresholding strategy and minimaxi threshold estimator gave reasonable performance (r > 0.900, root mean square error of calibration (RMSEC) = 0.100, cross validation (RMSECV) = 0.139 and prediction (RMSEP) = 0.125). Then, only 15% variables from this model were selected via the method of uninformative variable elimination to develop a simpler model, of which the performance deterioration could be ignored. The results showed that Vis/NIR can be used to predict pH value in fresh pork on-line, and variable selection can provide a simpler, more cost-effective calibration model. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.