THE NONDESTRUCTIVE MEASUREMENT OF THE SOLUBLE SOLID AND ACID CONTENTS OF INTACT PEACH USING VIS/NIR TRANSMITTANCE SPECTRA

Since the SSC(soluble solid contents) and titratable acidity of fruit are highly concerned to the taste, the need for measuring them by non-destructive technology such as NIR(Visual and Near-infrared) spectroscopy is increasing. Specially, in order to grade the quality of each fruit with a sorter at sorting and packing facilities, technologies for online measurement satisfying the tolerance in terms of accuracy and speed should be developed. Many researches have been done to develop devices to measure the internal qualities of fruit such as SSC, titratable acidity, firmness, etc. with the VIS(Visual)/NIR(Near Infrared) reflectance spectra. The distributions of the SSC, titratable acidity, firmness, etc. are different with respect to the position and depth of fruit, and generally the VIS/NIR light can interact with fruit in a few millimeters of pathlength, and it is very difficult to measure the qualities of inner flesh of fruit. Therefore, to measure the average concentrations of each quality factor such as SSC and titratable acidity with the reflectance-type NIR devices, the spectra of fruit at several positions should be measured. Recently, the interest about the transmittance-type VIS/NIR devices is increasing. NIR light can penetrate through the fruit about 1/10-1/1,000,000 %. Therefore, very intensive light source and very sensitive sensor should be adopted to measure the transmitted light spectra of intact fruit. The ultimate purpose of this study was to develop a device to measure the transmitted light spectra of intact fruit such as apple, pear, peach, etc. With the transmittance-type VIS/NIR device, the feasibility of measurement of the SSC and titratable acidity in intact fruit cultivated in Korea was tested. The results are summarized as follows; A simple measurement device which can measure the transmitted light spectra of intact fruit was constructed with sample holder, two 500W-tungsten halogen lamps, a real-time spectrometer having a very sensitive CCD array sensor and optical fiber probe. With the device, it was possible to measure the transmitted light spectra of intact fruit such as apple, pear and peach. Main factors affecting the intensity of transmitted light spectra were the size of sample, the radiation intensity of light source and the integration time of the detector. Sample holder should be designed so that direct light leakage to the probe could be protected. Preprocessing method to the raw spectrum data significantly influenced the performance of the nondestructive measurement of SSC and titratable acidity of intact fruit. Representative results of PLS models in predicting the SSC of peach were SEP of 0.558 Brix% and R2 of 0.819, and those in predicting titratable acidity were SEP of 0.056% and R2 of 0.655.