NIR Spectroscopy Applications for Internal and External Quality Analysis of Citrus Fruit—A Review

Abstract

The global citrus industry is continually confronted by new technological challenges to meet the ever-increasing consumer awareness and demand for quality-assured fruit. To face these challenges, recent trend in agribusiness is declining reliance on subjective assessment of quality and increasing adoption of objective, quantitative and non-destructive techniques of quality assessment. Non-destructive instrument-based methods are preferred to destructive techniques because they allow the measurement and analysis of individual fruit, reduce waste and permit repeated measures on the same item over time. A wide range of objective instruments for sensing and measuring the quality attributes of fresh produce have been reported. Among non-destructive quality assessment techniques, near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy (NIRS) is arguably the most advanced with regard to instrumentation, applications, accessories and chemometric software packages. This paper reviews research progress on NIRS applications in internal and external quality measurement of citrus fruit, including the selection of NIR characteristics for spectra capture, analysis and interpretation. A brief overview on the fundamental theory, history, chemometrics of NIRS including spectral pre-processing methods, model calibration, validation and robustness is included. Finally, future prospects for NIRS-based imaging systems such as multispectral and hyperspectral imaging as well as optical coherence tomography as potential non-destructive techniques for citrus quality assessment are explored.