NON-DESTRUCTIVE QUALITY EVALUATION OF VEGETABLES IN CHINA

Abstract

China has a rich resource of vegetable germplasms as well as a long history of vegetable cultivation. As a major source of Chinese non-staple food supply, vegetables can provide most dietary fibers, valuable kinds of vitamins and minerals. Some components in these plants have been proven valuable with regards to anticarcinogenicity, human immunity promotion, aging prevention, and health care. For these reasons, it has become a major concern and subject of research of breeders to continuously bring out new cultivars with improved nutritional qualities. As a fast and non-destructive analytical method, NIRS may be used to evaluate a large quantity of samples, and thus speed up progress in producing more desirable cultivars. This paper gives a brief introduction to the history as well as the current status of the use of Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) in the field of nutritional analysis of vegetables and fruits in China. A variety of components have been determined, including the crude protein (CP), neutral detergent fibers (NDF), reducing sugars (RS), organic acids, vitamin C, moisture in leaf vegetables; the dry matter, total sugar, organic acids, sucrose, glucose, fructose, citric acid, L-malic acid, succinic acid, β-carotene, vitamin C and E in intact fruited vegetables, such as the cucumber, tomato and pumpkin; and also the Brix value, sucrose, glucose, fructose, citric acid, L-malic acid, vitamin C in intact strawberry and apple.