Physics driven digital twins to quantify the impact of pre and postharvest variability on the end quality evolution of orange fruit

Abstract

Currently, there are differences in the quality loss between individual fruit upon arrival at retail. These differences in fruit quality stem from pre-harvest biological variability between individual fruit at harvest and postharvest variations in hygrothermal conditions between refrigerated shipments. The impact of these pre-harvest biological and postharvest variability on the final quality of each fruit that reaches the consumers remains largely uncharted. In this study, we addressed this knowledge gap by developing physics-based digital twins of orange fruit to unveil how pre-harvest and postharvest variability affect the final fruit quality upon arrival at retail. Markov chain Monte Carlo method was used to generate a realistic 'virtual' population of 1000 individual orange fruits at harvest. Afterwards, the impact of pre-harvest biological variability and variations in hygrothermal conditions between shipments on several orange quality metrics, including mass loss, fruit quality index (FQI), remaining shelf life (RSL), chilling injury severity (CI), total soluble solids (TSS), color, and Mediterranean fruit fly (MFF) mortality was quantified. Results showed that pre-harvest biological variability causes variations in mass loss of oranges at retail by up to 1.2%, FQI by up to 5% and RSL by more than 2 days. The postharvest variability between shipments causes high variations in mass loss of oranges at retail by up to 4%, FQI by more than 20%, RSL up to 3 days, and CI up to 5%. The study also revealed that compared to pre-harvest biological variability, postharvest variability between shipments could increase the variations in RSL of oranges at retail by 75%, FQI by 50%, and mass loss by ~10%. This work helps improve our understanding of the variability in the end fruit quality upon arrival at retail.

Combining experiments and mechanistic modeling to compare ventilated packaging types for strawberries from farm to retailer

“…However, in reality, all fruit possess an inherent biological variability due to preharvest conditions. Using a Monte Carlo approach, such variability can be accounted for to create a virtual population of fruit with different thermophysical properties (Onwude et al, 2022).…”

Dehydration and Rehydration Kinetics Modeling in the Phytochemical, Aroma, and Antioxidant Capacity of Tree Tomato Fruit Dried with Microwaves and Freeze Driers: A Comparative Study

“…The drying method is chosen based on the particularities of the product characteristics and socio-economic considerations as well as the energy need as fossil fuel prices are increasing [9]. Unfortunately, some studies pointed out the losses of some active biological compounds such as vitamin C and carotenoids [10,11], total polyphenols contents, and total flavonoids content [12] during drying. The long drying times at relatively high temperatures during the falling rate periods mostly lead to thermal degradation of some heat sensitive fruit compounds; consequently, microwave drying uses a shortened drying time and improves the final quality of the dried products [11].…”