Electronic Determination of Blueberry Fruit Quality Using Aroma Sensing Technology

Abstract

An electronic sniffer that nondestructively detects aromatic volatiles was used to grade commercially packaged blueberries. A total of 1,358 containers of commercial blueberries entering MBG grading facilities were first “sniffed” using the electronic sniffer, graded by USDA or MGB inspectors, and then subjected to discrimination analyses. The electronic sniffer separated the fresh top grade (grade 1) of fruit from the rest of the grades of blueberries with ≤ 82.79% accuracy when grading into five classes, and ≤89.3% when grading into three quality classes. The sniffer was also able to distinguish hand-harvested fruit from machine-harvested fruit from all cultivars tested (Bluecrop, Jersey, and Elliot). Highest classification accuracy was achieved with four gas sensors operating simultaneously within the sniffer. A stable signal response was achieved in 10 seconds, with each berry pack sampled at 10, 20, 40 and 80 seconds.