Assessment of watercore development in apples with MRI: Effect of fruit location in the canopy

Watercore distribution inside apple fruit (block or radial), and its incidence (% of tissue) were related to the effect of solar radiation inside the canopy as measured by a set of low-cost irradiation sensors. 221 samples were harvested in two seasons from the top and the bottom of the canopy and submitted to the non-invasive and non-destructive technique of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in order to obtain 20 inner tomography slices from each fruit and analyze the damaged areas using an interactive 3D segmentation method. The number of fruit corresponding to each type of damage and the relevant percentage were calculated and it was found that apples from the top of the tree were mainly of the radial type (84%) and had more watercore (approx. 5% more) than apples from the bottom (65% radial). From the image segmentation, the Euler number, a morphometric parameter, was extracted from the segmented images and related to the type of watercore symptoms. Apples with block watercore were grouped in Euler numbers between −400 and 400 with a small evolution. For apples with radial development, the Euler number was highly negative: up to −1439. Significant differences were also found regarding sugar composition, with higher fructose and total sugar contents in apples from the upper canopy, compared to those in the lower canopy location. In the seasons studied (2011 and 2012), significantly higher sorbitol and lower sucrose and fructose contents were found in watercore-affected tissue compared to the healthy tissue of affected apples and also compared to healthy apples.