METHODS FOR DETERMINING QUALITY OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

A.E. Watada
Horticultural Crops Quality Laboratory Beltsville
Agricultural Research Center Agricultural Research Service,
USDA Beltsville, MD 20705
Abstract
Quality of fruits and vegetables can be determined
objectively by measuring the physical and/or chemical
components related to the attribute. Texture/firmness, taste,
flavor and smell, and nutritional quality can be estimated by
destructive methods and some can be estimated by
nondestructive methods. Some of the nondestructive methods,
which employ optical, vibrational, electrical, nuclear
magnetic resonant, and gas analysis techniques, have potential
for commercial application.
Quality of fresh fruits and vegetables is generally based
on the chemical composition or physical characteristics or a
combination of these two factors. Attributes of interest to
the consumers are visual appearance, texture/firmness,
sensory, nutritional and food safety. These can be estimated
by destructive methods and some by nondestructive methods.
Destructive Methods
Texture/firmness can be measured by determining the force
required to compress, penetrate, shear, or deform the produce.
The compression method measures the force required to compress
a commodity a few millimeters. A Magness-Taylor or Effigi
firmness meter or other similar instruments (Abbott et al.,
1976) measure .the force required for a small diameter probe
to penetrate a commodity a given distance. A cell such as the
Kramer shear cell (Kramer and Twigg, 1970) is used to measure
the force required to shear a product. The deformation method
measures and records the time-force curve as a small cylinder
or cube of a sample is deformed between two plates at a
constant speed. The data from the time-force curve, known also
as texture profile, is used to estimate the degree of
crispness, toughness, and hardness (Abbott et al. 1982).
Sensory attributes which include taste, flavor or smell are
difficult to determine objectively because of the poor
understanding of how chemical components and their
interactions affects these attributes. Sweetness is based on
soluble solids or the brix content using a refractometer
(Ruck, 1963) and sourness is based on the amount of standard
base required to titrate juice of a sample to a given pH.
However, because sweetness and sourness mask each other, the
intensity of sweetness or sourness is dependent on the sugar
Acta Horticulturae 379, 1995

Quality of Fruit and Vegetables

Pre- and Post-Harvest Factors and Technolog

to acid ratio in some products, or on the total content of

sugars or acids in other-products such as the tomatoes (Jones
and Scott, 1983). Volatile compounds are responsible for the
distinctive aroma and these compounds in combination with
taste sensation,'that is sweetness, sourness, and bitterness,
form the characteristic flavor of the commodity. Volatile
compounds can be measured by a gas chromatograph combined with
a mass spectra detector. In grapes, as many as 225 volatile
components were separated with the gas chromatograph/mass
spectrometer (Schreier et al., 1976). In some fruits, a single
compound can have an impact in conveying the flavor. For
example, ethyl 2-methylbutyrate conveys the flavor of apples,
gamma decalactone of peaches, and isolamylacetate of bananas
(Shewfelt, 1986). In tomatoes, at least 3 0 compounds have to
be analyzed to obtain the characteristic flavor components
(Buttery et al., 1989). The gas chromatograph is also used to
identify undesirable components such as limonene and naringen
that are responsible for the bitterness in citrus (Shewfelt,
1986) .

Nutritional quality is determined by analyzing minerals,

vitamins, fibers and anticarcinogins. Minerals can be
determined accurately and effectively by a plasma emission
spectrophotometer (Tobias et al., 1993) which is more advanced
than the atomic absorption spectrophotometer. The atomic
absorption spectrophotometer measures the energy absorbed at a
specific wavelength by the different elements, whereas a
plasma emission spectrometer measures energy emitted by the
elements at different wavelengths when vibrated at high radio
frequencies. Vitamins, which includes pro-vitamin A (betacarotene), vitamin C (ascorbic acid), and vitamins B,
(thymine), B2 (riboflavin), and B6 (pyridoxine) can be measured
with a high performance liquid chromatograph (Watada and Tran,
1985; Watada and Tran,
1987)
. Fruits and vegetables contain compounds such as
carotenoids (Bureau and Bushway, 1986) and elagic acid (Maas
et al., 1991) which have anticarcinogen properties, and these
can be measured with a high performance liquid chromatograph.
Nondestructive Methods
With the advancement of electronic technology,
nondestructive methods are being developed to measure
quality. These methods employ techniques such as optical,
vibrational, electrical, 'nuclear magnetic resonant, and gas
analysis to measure quality attributes.
The optical properties can be determined by light reflectance,
light transmittance, diffuse reflectance, and delayed light
emission methods. The light reflectance method measures the
amount of light reflected from the surface of an illuminated
commodity. It is currently used commercially to automatically
2

sort oranges, apples, lemons, and tomatoes for color, shape,

and limited defects. Th
e
light transmittance technique measures the amount of light
absorbed by the commodity when a selected wavelength of .
light is transmitted through the commodity and can be used to
estimate tomato ripeness or pigmentation (Watada et al.,
1976), apple quality (Watada et al. , 1985), pear core
breakdown (Wang and Worthington, 1979), and papaya maturity
(Birth et al., 1984).
The diffuse reflectance method measures the light reflected
from under the surface of the commodity. Upon illumination,
light penetrates a few millimeters into the surface tissue,
where a small portion of the energy is reflected. Fiber optics
are used for these measurements and many of the measurements
are now made in the near infrared (NIR) region. The NIR
absorption spectrum of a fruit generally is not definitive so
it is difficult to select the best wavelength that is related
to a specific quality attribute. To overcome this problem, a
first or second derivative of the spectrum is calculated and
multiple regression analysis is used to select the best
wavelengths. Wavelengths selected are not necessarily absorbed
by the component of interest. In Kawano's study (1992) for
estimating sugar content in peaches, multiple regression
analysis selected 950 nm as the best wavelength followed by
1142 and 906 nm in sequence. Sugar absorbed at 906 nm but not
at the water bands of 950 and 1142 nm. Because the absorption
at these two waterbands correlated significantly with the
sugar content, Kawano used all three wavelengths to estimate
the sugar content in peaches. Birth et al. (1985) used only
906 nm to determine the dry matter content of onions whereas
Dull et al. (1988) used 913 nm to measure the soluble solids
in cantaloupe, and both wavelengths are ascribed to the same
sugar band. Other applications of the diffuse reflectance
method are to estimate papaya maturity (Birth et al. 1984),
distinguish bruised from unbruised regions on apples (Upchurch
et al. , 1990), and measure soluble solids in honeydew melons
(Dull et al., 1992), carbohydrate, protein, fat, and moisture
compositions in numerous agricultural products (Norris,
1983) .
Other chemometric methods are used to develop NIR based
quantitative and qualitative models. Davenel et al. (1987)
used Fourier analysis to determine the sugar content in
"Golden Delicious" apples. This makes a multitude of
simultaneous interferogram analysis of the sample and through
a series of complex mathematical calculation,
derives a spectrum. Bochereau et al. (1992) used the neural
network technique which is also known as the connectionist
model to determine apple quality. In this model, a large
number of computing elements are linked to each other
according to adjustable connections and the data is analyzed
accordingly.
The delayed light emission method measures the energy
3
reradiated by a sample when illuminated briefly. The reradiated

energy is in the nanowatt range and persists only for 3 to 5

seconds. Several factors such as wavelength an
d
intensity of excitation, dark exposure prior to excitation,
temperature and chlorophyll content affect the reradiated
energy. Chlorophyll pigment is the main source of reradiated
energy. Delayed light emission technique was used to sort
tomatoes (Chuma et al., 1982), color of persimmons (Chuma et
al., 1982), and chilling injury of cucumbers and peppers
(Abbott and Massie, 1985) . Abbott and Massie showed that the
delayed light emission amplitude of a chilled product was less
with increasing amount of chilling injury.
'
Vibrational properties of the commodities can be measured
at either low, (200 Hz), sonic (5 to 10,000 Hz), ultrasonic
(50 kHz to 5 mHz), frequency vibration, or by acoustic
response. Low frequency vibration was used to separate
blueberries (Hamann et al., 1973) and grapes (Hamann and
Carroll, 1971) . In exciting the product at sonic frequencies,
the resonant modes are related to the textural properties.
Abbott and Massie (1993) used the second resonant frequency
and mass to calculate a stiffness coefficient, which was then
related to ripeness of apples. Measurement of the ultrasonic
vibrational properties of the commodity with the current
methods does not appear to be promising for determining
quality. In the acoustic response analysis, the natural
frequency of a fruit or commodity is determined after it is
bounced on a hard surface. Yamamoto et al. (1981) used a
related technique to determine the firmness and sensory
quality of apples and watermelons; whereas, Saltveit et al.
(1985) were not able to determine the maturity of tomatoes
with this technique. Delwiche and Sarig (1991) have modified
and improved this technique by placing the sensor on the
impact probe rather than on the hard surface to which the
fruit is bounced.
The nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technique is a very
costly method that is used in the medical field. NMR detects
concentration of hydrogen nuclei and is sensitive to
variations in the concentration and bonding state of water and
oil in material; therefore, it is used to measure oil and
moisture in grain and seeds as well as oil in avocado
(McCarthy et al., 1989). Stroshine et al. (1991) used the spin
relaxation time of a measurement made with a commercial NMR
unit having a low resolution (10 Mhz) to measure sugar content
in apples. In seeking a less costly unit for measurement, they
developed a low field, low resolution proton magnetic
resonance unit and processed the data by the Hahn spin echo
technique to estimate soluble solids contents of whole
cherries (Li et al., 1992). The unit was also used to estimate
the soluble solids contents of cut apples, nectarines, and
pears, but the correlation was not as good as that noted with
cherries.
A nondestructive method has been developed to determine the
total volatile content on the surface of a fruit (Benady et
al., 1992) . The electronic sensing head is a small dome shaped
unit with semi-conductors. The electrical resistance of the
4
semi-conductors decreases when exposed to reducin

g
gases such as the volatiles. When the dome is placed on a
fruit, the flow of electrons is greater with riper melons
that produce more total volatiles.
Machine vision system uses various nondestructive
methods to estimate quality and grade the product (Chen et.
al., 1989; Tollner et al., 1993). In this system, images are
acquired by either an array camera, line scan camera, X-ray,
ultrasonic scanning or NMR imaging. Computer algorithms were
developed to extract features related to specific quality
attributes. In order to process images at line speeds,
algorithms are implemented in specialized computer hardware.
NMR imaging can be used to recognize watercore in apples
(Wang et al., 1988), core breakdown in pears (Wang and Wang,
198 9), chilling injury of zucchini (Wang and Wang,
1992)
,
bruises of apples, warm damage in pears and pits
in prunes (Bellon, 1990) . Image analysis has been used to
recognize and analyze bruises on apples (RehKugler and
Throop, 1989), defects on prunes (Delwiche et al., 1988;
Delwiche et al., 1993), raisin quality (Okamura et al.,
1993)
,
defects on stone fruits (Singh et al., 1993;
Miller and Delwiche, 1991), and water core in apples
(Upchurch and Throop, 1992).
In summary, the technology to determine physical
properties or chemical composition to estimate the quality
of fruits and vegetables has advanced considerably in the
past decade. Advancement of this technology is extremely
important in order to utilize these nondestructive
techniques in automatic grading, and thus provide consumers
with a desired quality product.
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