Non-destructive firmness assessment of ‘SunGold’ kiwifruit a three-year study
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Date
2024-02-14
Open Access Location
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor and Francis Group on behalf of the Royal Society of New Zealand
Rights
(c) 2024 The Author/s
CC BY 4.0
CC BY 4.0
Abstract
Kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis var. chinensis) firmness is routinely measured in a destructive manner for decision-making purposes. Thus, a population’s quality is inferred by measuring a sample from that population. Consequently, studies have investigated non-destructive techniques for measuring fruit firmness. However, most of these studies have been restricted to a single season or focused on performance over long-term storage. This work compared non-destructive compression (1 mm deformation) and acoustic stiffness with flesh firmness measured with a penetrometer across three seasons. ‘SunGold’ kiwifruit were harvested from 11, 9 and 3 orchards on multiple occasions in 2020, 2021 and 2022, respectively. Kiwifruit was freighted to Palmerston North and assessed on arrival. Thirty fruit per orchard were measured on lab arrival, whilst 24 fruit per orchard were stored for two weeks at 0°C prior to assessment. The non-destructive methods had a strong (r2 > 0.89–0.92) segmented correlation with flesh firmness (0.52–10 kgf). Flesh firmness could be adequately estimated with the non-destructive methods within a season. However, segmented regression performance was reduced when predicting for a season outside of the training population. Nonetheless, these non-destructive methods may be useful for estimating flesh firmness at harvest and after short-term storage (2 weeks at 0 °C).
Description
Keywords
Actinidia chinensis, acoustic stiffness, compression, flesh firmness, segmented regression
Citation
Sneddon T, Rivera S, Li M, Heyes J, East A. (2024). Non-destructive firmness assessment of ‘SunGold’ kiwifruit a three-year study. New Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticultural Science. Latest Articles.