PERFORMANCE OF AN INSTRUMENT DESIGNED FOR, AND EVALUATION OF METHODS TO ASSESS, PEACH FRUIT IMPACT BRUISE SUSCEPTIBILITY¹

Abstract

A simple, inexpensive device was fabricated for imposing drop impact loads on fruit and tested using a 0.5 J load on peach [(Prunus persica (L.) Batsch] fruit harvested at two maturity stages. The device consists of an electromagnet to secure a metallic mass above the fruit, a height adjustment forpositioning the mass, a foot pedal switch for interrupting current to the electromagnet, allowing the mass to strike the fruit, and a thick aluminum base toprevent fruit movement upon impact. Following impact, fruit were stored at 2C for one week (to simulate impact damage during harvest and packing, prior to short term cold storage). Impact bruise susceplibility was assessed after storage by bruise occurrence (without regard to bruise size), and by bruise severity (measured as bruise depth, bruise width and bruise discoloration). Maturity at harvest had no effect on bruise occurrence, but did signGcantly effect bruise severity. Bruise depth was more sensitive than bruise width or discoloration to differences between cultivars. Cultivar ranking for bruise susceptibility differed, depending on the parameter used to obtain the ranking. 'Approved for publication by the Director, Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station. This research was supported under project H-2161 and by USDA grant 90-34150-5022. 4Present Address: The Samuel Roberts Nobel Foundation, P.O. Box 2180, Ardmore, OK 73402. 5To whom inquiries should be directed. Telephone: (405) 744-5423; FAX (405) 744-9693.

Evaluation of the Relationship Between Shock and Bruise Area of Apple Fruit

“…Although several past studies proposed to clarify the relationship between specific shock conditions and the probability of damage of fresh produce by drawing DBCs (Maness et al, 1995;Mathew and Hyde, 1997;Lu and Wang, 2007;Kitazawa et al, 2014), the current result is an advance in clarifying the relationship between Vc, PAcc, and BA for apple fruit.…”

Mechanical Damage During Fruit Post-Harvest Handling: Technical and Physiological Implications

“…Thus, there are some studies dealing with the different response of several fruit varieties or cultivars to mechanical damage (Maness et al, 1995) intentionally caused mechanical damage in five peach cultivars and found significant differences among the diameters and depths of the injuries. Similar results have been reported for Asian pear (Chen et al, 1987) and apple (Ericsson and Tahir, 1996b).…”