A new method for evaluating the penetration ability of near infrared diffuse reflectance light to fruit peel with chemometrics

In this paper, the penetration ability of near infrared (NIR) diffuse reflectance light to peel was studied with grating NIR spectrometer. 15 kinds of fruit, including 3 kinds of thin-peel non-citrus fruit, 9 kinds of medium-peel citrus and 3 kinds of thick-peel citrus were investigated. A new strategy to evaluate the NIR penetration ability was developed with a designed penetration experiment and chemometric methods. The penetration abilities of different integration time, peel thickness and wavelength bands were compared. The results show that NIR light can easily penetrate the peel of thin-peel fruit, while it is not easy to penetrate the peel of citrus due to the thick peel. Both the thickness and composition of the peel have relationship with the penetration ability. Increase of integration time can improve the penetration ability to some extent. However, as the integration time lengthens, noise interference and spectral distortion may appear in long wave near infrared (LWNIR) region. The optimal integration time is 65 ms for citrus. Besides, the penetration ability of short wave near infrared (SWNIR) light is better than that of LWNIR light, and the absorption peaks of peel are mainly located in LWNIR region, indicating that SWNIR is more suitable for fruit internal quality detection.

Automated summary

This paper investigated the penetration ability of near-infrared light through different fruit peels. A new strategy was developed to evaluate the penetration ability, and the effects of different factors on the penetration ability were compared. The results showed that near-infrared light can easily penetrate the peel of thin-skinned fruits, while it is difficult to penetrate the peel of citrus fruits due to the thick peel. Both the thickness and composition of the peel are related to the penetration ability. Increasing the integration time can improve the penetration ability to some extent, but too long integration time may cause noise interference and spectral distortion. Finally, it was found that the penetration ability of short-wave near-infrared light is better than that of long-wave near-infrared light, and the absorption peaks of the peel are mainly located in the long-wave near-infrared region, so short-wave near-infrared light is more suitable for detecting the internal quality of fruits.