Suchergebnisse

Very nutritional and healthy, dried figs constitute an appreciated food for local populations of the Mediterranean area. However, the incidence of mycotoxins in this product, mainly attributed to traditional and poor agricultural practices, has been widely demonstrated and may develop quickly if storage conditions are not suitable, exceeding maximum safety thresholds set by European Union regulations. Mycotoxin identification is currently achieved by means of destructive methods that need sample preparation, and moreover are expensive and time consuming. Early and reliable detection techniques are required to prevent high risks for humans. Hyperspectral imaging is currently used for quality evaluation and safety inspection of agricultural products and food. It has not been used for the detection of dried fig contamination but could be a promising tool to determine the best spectral bands that permit contaminated fruit to be identified and eliminated, especially when applied to postharvest automated processes. In this context, the present work deals with preliminary trials on the ability of hyperspectral imaging to identify contaminations with aflatoxins and ochratoxin A on dried fig of Cosenza (PDO, Protected Designation of Origin) fruit by analyzing UV-induced fluorescence. Artificially contaminated figs did not show any fluorescence while decayed figs emitted fluorescence between 450 nm and 490 nm. The obtained results highlighted important aspects to be considered in order to improve the applied methodology and carry out further researches on the present theme.

Spain is one of the most important producer and exporter of fresh fruit in the world. Part of the Spanish production is commercialised as canned fruit, which represent 7.5% of the food industry and a market of about 4.200 million euros. However, the recent presence in the market of third countries with much lower production costs has reduced the Spanish canned fruit exports to the European Union in 50% in the last four years. This problem is particularly important in the case of satsuma slices, where only a few producers remain in Spain. A complete automation of the whole process is the only way for these enterprises to survive. Although most of the tasks have already been automated, the visual inspection at the end of the line is still performed by operators that separate manually the fruit in commercial categories.

[EN] The main cause of flesh browning in 'Rojo Brillante' persimmon fruit is mechanical damage caused during harvesting and packing. Innovation and research on nondestructive techniques to detect this phenomenon in the packing lines are necessary because this type of alteration is often only seen when the final consumer peels the fruit. In this work, we have studied the application of hyperspectral imaging in the range of 450-1040 nm to detect mechanical damage without any external symptoms. The fruit was damaged in a controlled manner. Later, images were acquired before and at 0, 1, 2 and 3 days after damage induction. First, the spectral data captured from the images were analysed through an algorithm based on principal component analysis (PCA). The aim was to automatically separate intact and damaged fruit, and to detect the damage in the PC images when present. With this algorithm, 90.0% of intact fruit and 90.8% of damaged fruit were correctly detected. A model based on partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), was later calibrated using the mean spectrum of the pixels detected as damaged, to determine the moment when the fruit was damaged. The model differentiated fruit corresponding correctly to 0, 1, 2 and 3 days after damage induction, achieving a total accuracy of 99.4%. ; This work is co-funded by the projects AEI PID2019-107347RR-C31, PID2019-107347RR-C32, PID2019-107347RR-C33, IVIA-GVA 51918 and the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) of the Generalitat Valenciana 2014-2020. ; Munera, S.; Rodríguez-Ortega, A.; Aleixos Borrás, MN.; Cubero, S.; Gómez-Sanchis, J.; Blasco, J. (2021). Detection of Invisible Damages in `Rojo Brillante¿ Persimmon Fruit at Different Stages Using Hyperspectral Imaging and Chemometrics. Foods. 10(9):1-12. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods10092170 ; S ; 1 ; 12 ; 10 ; 9