Banana Ripeness Analysis Using Reflectance and Photoluminescence

Abstract

Bananas are favourite tropical fruit since bananas contain source of nutrition. In the industry, the banana ripeness is a mayor issue for harvesting. It is a challenge if we have a good simple instrument for determining ripeness of bananas. In this work, we utilized two optical measurement systems for detecting ripeness of bananas, i.e., reflectance and photoluminescence. The reflectance spectrum results show a decrease intensity at 675 nm which is clorophyll reflectance from green bananas to ripe bananas. This results is correspond with the absorbance spectrum whichs shows decrease absorbtion at a wavelength 675 nm. The photoluminescence results show that when banana is excited with laser 405 nm the emission spectra shows blue luminescence at 495 nm and red luminescence at 700 nm. Green bananas shows low blue luminescence and strong red luminescence. While ripe bananas shows strong blue luminescence and weak red luminescence. Blue luminescence is according to phenolic acid emission and red luminescence is according to clorophyll emission. Using only banana peel and characteristics of the spectrum, we can distinguish ripeness of banana. Our simple measurement systems are potential for detecting bananas in the field and can be used in banana industries.