Quality of Vegetable Products: Assessment of Physical, Chemical, and Microbiological Changes in Vegetable Products by Nondestructive Methods

Abstract

This chapter focuses on quality and safety evaluation of the vegetable products using different sensing technologies, imaging processing, and chemometric methods. It provides an overview of the instruments used for evaluating the quality of vegetable products such as computer vision, multispectral imaging, near-infrared spectroscopy, and hyperspectral imaging (refer to Sect. 2). Then, the basic analysis methods and chemometrics are introduced in detail (Sect. 3), including image/spectral preprocessing and correction/calibration, feature and band extraction and sample selection, and analysis models and evaluation. Finally, the potential applications of the instruments and the basic analysis methods in vegetable product quality and safety analysis and control are explained (Sect. 4). The external qualities such as shape, size, color, texture, and defects; internal qualities such as soluble solid content (SSC), acid content, and internal defects; and microbiological changes such as microbial and fecal contamination are discussed in detail. Conclusions and future works are proposed (Sect. 5).