Determination of Water Content Of Intact Sapodilla Using Near Infrared Spectroscopy

Abstract

Water content is one of components that affects the fruit firmness of sapodilla. Fruit firmness is used as an indicator of physical fruit quality, which determines consumer acceptance. Generally, determination of water content is done by drying the fruit itself. However, this method damages the fruit, therefore needed a non-destructive method which able to determine the water content of sapodilla. Non-destructive method is also very useful to reduce physical damage to fruit (bruses) caused by the touch of the consumers hands to assess the fruit firmness. Near infrared spectroscopy is a non-destructive measurement that has been widely used to determine various components of fruit quality, including water content. The purpose of this study was to determine water content of intact sapodilla non-destructively using near infrared spectroscopy. This research used experimental method with multivariate data analysis by modelling, continued by data processing using ISIS software ( Integrated Spectronics Pty, Ltd, Australia and Unscrambler multivariate data software (version 9.7, CAMO, Oslo, Norway). Further research resulted value has the same accuracy as the value of nondestructive measurements. The result showed that near infrared spectroscopy was able to determine water content of intact sapodilla nondestructively.