Monitoring of firmness evolution for round eggplant (solanum melongena l.) during storage by non-destructive acoustic method

Abstract

A few years ago, the inspection of impact quality and maturity for fruits and vegetables by using the different methods and devices has become the focus of extremely intensive research. This is because the quality, firmness and maturity are the important parameters to resist the impact damage of fruits and vegetables. Firmness is one of the major factors contributing to the quality of eggplant fruit. There are a lot of test and experiments have been introduced and done to evaluate the effects of their impact on agricultural products using high techniques such as vibration (acoustic, ultrasonic and sonic response). This research was conducted in order to help the small companies and farmers to get an inexpensive way to improve their eggplant quality. In this research, the firmness of eggplant fruit was monitored by using the non-destructive acoustic method. One device and one measurement system were developed in order to run the experiment for acoustic method. This technique provides a stiffness factor S, based on the time interval and the mass of intact fruit. The firmness of eggplant fruit was monitored for 10 days in the condition of room temperature. Besides that, the experiment by using the texture analyzer also was held to measure the hardness of the eggplant during storage period. The comparison between the acoustic method and the texture analyzer was validated through series of test. At the end, result for this research showed that the firmness of eggplants were decreased as the day increase. The firmness and hardness of the eggplant also was related according to the correlation between them. The correlation between the firmness and hardness of the eggplant was expressed in y = 0.2985x + 1475.9 equation.