Non-destructive, non-invasive, in-line real-time phase-based reflectance for quality monitoring of fruit

Food quality monitoring in the production process is essential. The control of food quality and freshness is of growing interest for both consumer and food industry. Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is popular as it does not need any sample preparation. However, NIR spectroscopy is costly and needs reliable calibration. A non-contact, non-destructive optical process is proposed in this work to monitor the quality of the food. It is shown that the reflected phase information can be used to detect the quality of the fruits. The color and the spectral reflectance change with storage. The changes in the spectral feature due to ripening or decay of apples are used to non-destructively monitor the quality of the fruit. A closed relationship between the reflected phase information and degradation is obtained. The developed model is simple, low cost, and does not need extensive calibration as compared to conventional technologies currently used like NIR besides being robust to skin color or appearances of the fruit. The phase-based reflectance spectroscopy could revolutionize the on/inline quality monitoring of the fruits.