The effect of fruit properties on the apricot bruises susceptibility

Abstract

Some forces and impacts that occur during transporting and handling can reduce the apricot quality. Bruise damage is a major cause of fruit quality loss. Bruises occur under dynamic and static loading when stress induced in the fruit exceeds the failure stress of the fruit tissue. In this paper, two models were presented to evaluate the bruises susceptibility of apricots due to impact energy and peak contact force. Statistical prediction models of absorption energy were constructed to calculate “Ziaolmolki” apricot bruise susceptibility regarding fruit properties. The impacts were controlled by a pendulum. The regression models were made based on impact force and impact energy as the main independent variables and other parameters including fruit temperature, acoustic stiffness, colour parameter b* and radius of curvature. Pendulum was used to perform three levels of impact on apricot fruit. The main and interactions effects between variables were significant at 5 % probability level. It was demonstrated that increasing the temperature and curvature radius and lowering acoustical stiffness will reduce the bruise damage of the apricot fruit. Also, variance analysis indicated that three controlling factors, temperature, colour and impact force, significantly affected (P < 0.05) absorption energy.