S17 - Session P2 - Novel Technology for non-destructive measurements of fruit quality in avocado

Authors: Dario Stefanelli *, Declan McCauley, Daniele Pelliccia

Consumer acceptance is critical for fresh produce industries to assure return buy and continuous business. Fruit quality plays a fundamental role in consumer acceptance. Therefore, it is important for the operators to deliver fruit of consistent high quality to consumers. Australia has national quality standards setting the minimum dry matter content of 23% at harvest for avocado fruit. Fruit with less than 23% dry matter at harvest will not ripen correctly and will not develop the full range of taste and internal quality needed to assure consumer acceptability. It is important for growers to measure dry matter development in the field to identify optimal harvesting time. Some non-destructive technology based on NIR is available, but it is expensive and requires regular calibration. The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development in Western Australia in collaboration with Rubens Technologies has initiated an experiment to test a new non-destructive instrument based on fluorescence. The instrument has multispectral sensors and three different lights to stimulate fluorescence response. Over 500 fruit have been tested. Around 300 were used to build the correlation and 200 for verification. Correlation with dry matter in avocado was high (R 2 0.71 and RMSE of 1.78). Additional correlations with fruit firmness were also tested and discussed in the paper. The portable, non-destructive, fluorescence-based field and laboratory instrument cold be of high benefit to the avocado industry to deliver consistent high quality fruit to consumers.