Determining quality and maturity of pomegranates using multispectral imaging

In this paper, we investigated the use of multispectral imaging technique to quantify pomegranate fruit quality. Three quality factors including total soluble solids (TSS), pH and firmness were studied at four different maturity stages of 88, 109, 124 and 143 days after full bloom (DAFB) and were correlated with the spectral information extracted from images taken at four wavelength spectra. TSS, pH and firmness of the same samples were recorded using nondestructive methods and then modeled with their corresponding spectral data using partial least squire regression (PLSR). The correlation coefficient (r), RMSEC and RPD for the calibration models was found to be: r = 0.97, RMSEC = 0.21 °Brix and RPD = 6.7 °Brix for TSS; r = 0.93, RMSEC = 0.035 and RPD = 5.01 for pH; r = 0.95, RMSEC = 0.65 N and RPD = 5.65 N for firmness. Also these parameters for the validation models were as follows: r = 0.97, RMSEP = 0.22 °Brix and RPD = 5.77 °Brix for TSS; r = 0.94, RMSEP = 0.038 and RPD = 4.98 for pH; r = 0.94, RMSEP = 0.68 N and RPD = 5.33 N for firmness. The results demonstrated the capability of multispectral imaging and chemometrics as useful techniques to nondestructively monitoring pomegranate main quality attributes.