Abstract
This paper presents an innovative and low-cost approach for nondestructive fruit quality analysis. The specialized optical fiber sensor developed and presented in this paper used a monochromatic wavelength, rather than a broad spectrum, to measure the intact carambola (star fruit) intrinsic quality, namely pH and firmness. The main objective of this research was to investigate the two optical fiber sensors used in this work, namely, the optical fiber red system (OF-RS) that operated with the peak sensitivity at 635 nm and the optical fiber near the infrared spectroscopy system (OF-NIRS) that operated with the peak sensitivity at 880 nm. Both systems showed good accuracy in the pH and firmness measurement of the intact carambola with the correlation coefficient R over 0.75, and the measurement results were comparable with those of the commercial spectrometer. The best measurement results were obtained using OF-RS (pH: R = 0.876; the root mean square error (RMSE) = 0.211 pH; firmness: R = 0.872; RMSE = 0.909 kgf).
Highlights
For many decades, various efforts for fruit quality assessment have been theoretically and practically implemented
The main objective of this research was to investigate the two optical fiber sensors used in this work, namely, the optical fiber red system (OF-RS) that operated with the peak sensitivity at 635 nm and the optical fiber near the infrared spectroscopy system (OF-NIRS) that operated with the peak sensitivity at 880 nm
The first part of this section presents the results from the interactance measurement of the pH and firmness of the intact carambola using the Jaz spectrometer, whereas the second part elaborates on the result obtained using the optical fiber sensors
Summary
Various efforts for fruit quality assessment have been theoretically and practically implemented. Realizing the importance of these parameters on consumers’ acceptance, growers and distributors are developing company specifications that include relevant intrinsic properties acceptable to the consumers, such as the firmness and sugar and acid contents [3] Measuring these parameters usually requires destructive procedures and much labor and time. This paper presents an innovative application of the optical fiber sensor that uses LEDs and photodetector for the measurement of the fruit intrinsic quality, namely, pH and firmness. At this point of the research, experiments have been conducted on carambola (star fruit) from the B10 cultivar. The main objective of this paper is to identify the capability of the monochromatic optical fiber sensor in obtaining measurement accuracy that is comparable with that generated by commercial spectrometers
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