Chapters authored
Optical Methods for Firmness Assessment of Fresh Produce: A Review
This chapter is devoted to a review of optical techniques to measure the firmness of fresh produce. Emphasis is placed on the techniques that have a potential for online high-speed grading. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and spatially resolved reflectance spectroscopy (SRRS) are discussed in detail because of their advantages for online applications. For both techniques, this chapter reviews the fundamental principles as well as the measured performances for measuring the firmness of fresh produce, particularly fruit. For both techniques, there have been studies that show correlations with penetrometer firmness as high as r = 0.8 − 0.9. However, most studies appear to involve bespoke laboratory instruments measuring single produce types under static conditions. Therefore, accurate performance comparison of the two techniques is very difficult. We suggest more studies are now required on a wider variety of produce and particularly comparative studies between the NIRS and SRRS systems on the same samples. Further instrument developments are also likely to be required for the SRRS systems, especially with an online measurement where fruit speed and orientation are likely to be issues, before the technique can be considered advantageous compared to the commonly used NIRS systems.
Part of the book: Postharvest Handling