Rapid detection of browning levels of lychee pericarp as affected by moisture contents using hyperspectral imaging

Lychee is an important tropical and subtropical fruit. However, the quality of lychee fruit changes easily after harvest and it is difficult to control the process. One of the most significant factors impacting lychee quality seriously is enzymatic browning, which is commonly affected by moisture loss of pericarp during storage. As an emerging technique, hyperspectral imaging (HSI) carries many unique advantages compared to conventional detection methods, providing an innovative tool for quality evaluation of many fruits. The current study focused on exploring the relationship between browning levels of lychee and moisture contents (MC) of pericarp, and developing calibration models for determining browning degree of lychee based on the MC prediction of pericarp using HSI technique. Two sets of optimal wavelengths were selected using regression coefficients (RC) from partial least squares regression (PLSR) and successive projections algorithm (SPA), respectively. Calibration models for determining browning levels of lychee were developed using PLSR, back-propagation neural network (BP-NN) and radial basis function support vector regression (RBF-SVR) algorithms and their performances were compared. The results demonstrated that the RBF-SVR model based on the optimal wavelengths selected by RC had the best performance with coefficients of determination R2 of 0.946 and 0.948, and root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.80% and 0.83% for training and testing sets, respectively, showing browning levels of lychee could be determined by this approach. Finally, the visualization map of lychee with different browning levels was created and distribution of browning degree in a lychee was observed by examining color variation among pixels in the map.