Effect of Impact Level and Fruit Properties on Golden Delicious Apple Bruising

Javadi Javadi

doi:10.3844/ajabssp.2010.114.121

Abstract

Problem statement: Bruise damage is a major cause of fruit quality lo ss. Bruises occur under dynamic and static loading when stress induce d in the fruit exceeds the failure stress of the fr uit tissue. Statistical bruise estimation models were c onstructed to calculate Golden Delicious apple brui se volume with respect to fruit properties. Approach: The regression models were built based upon impact force and impact energy as main independent variable with other parameters including fruit curvature radius, temperature and acoustical stiffn ess. An instrumented pendulum was constructed as a tool to perform three levels of controlled impact o n apple fruit. Results: Significant effects of acoustical stiffness, temperature and the curvature radius and some interactions on bruising were obtained at 5% probability level with the coefficie nt of determination of 0.93 and 0.98 for force mode l and energy model respectively. Conclusion: It was demonstrated that increasing the temperatur e and curvature radius and lowering acoustical stiffness will reduce the bruise damage of the golden delicious apple fruit.

Highlights

By some other factors such as texture, variety, Apple consumers increasingly demand better quality fruits
The energy of impact is not affected by the fruit characteristics, which present a privilege of impact energy over impact force models
The lower limit of applied impact level was based on the measured impact force during handling and transporting but the higher impact level was in apple mechanical harvesting and sorting

Summary

Introduction

By some other factors such as texture, variety, Apple consumers increasingly demand better quality fruits. The statistical models contain contact energy or impact force as the main independent variable (Van Zeebroeck et al, 2007a). Used independent variables in the regression models consist of: probability of impact force to be influenced by fruit properties (e.g., temperature and maturity). Contact energy models are superior to inquire the effect of fruit characteristics on bruise damage (Van Zeebroeck et al, 2007a; 2007b; 2007c). The objective of the present work was to evolve bruise estimation models for Golden Delicious apple contain parameters namely impact force, impact energy, fruit acoustical stiffness, curvature radius and temperature. The lowest impact level was close to the MATERIALS AND METHODS

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion