Pomegranate Quality Evaluation Using Non-Destructive Approaches: A Review

Abstract

Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is one of the most healthful and popular fruits in the world. The increasing demand for pomegranate has resulted in it being processed into different food products and food supplements. Researchers over the years have shown interest in exploring non-destructive techniques as alternative approaches for quality assessment of the harvest at the on-farm point to the retail level. The approaches of non-destructive techniques are more efficient, inexpensive, faster and yield more accurate results. This paper provides a comprehensive review of recent applications of non-destructive technology for the quality evaluation of pomegranate fruit. Future trends and challenges of using non-destructive techniques for quality evaluation are highlighted in this review paper. Some of the highlighted techniques include computer vision, imaging-based approaches, spectroscopy-based approaches, the electronic nose and the hyperspectral imaging technique. Our findings show that most of the applications are focused on the grading of pomegranate fruit using machine vision systems and the electronic nose. Measurements of total soluble solids (TSS), titratable acidity (TA) and pH as well as other phytochemical quality attributes have also been reported. Value-added products of pomegranate fruit such as fresh-cut and dried arils, pomegranate juice and pomegranate seed oil have been non-destructively investigated for their numerous quality attributes. This information is expected to be useful not only for those in the grower/processing industries but also for other agro-food commodities.

Advancement of non-destructive spectral measurements for the quality of major tropical fruits and vegetables: a review

“…Conventional methods relying on the quantification of different quality traits such as dry matter content, oil content, and moisture content have also been reported in the study of quality parameters of fruits and vegetables; however, these methods were found to be undesirable, destructive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive ( Magwaza and Tesfay, 2015 ; Kyriacou and Rouphael, 2018 ). Therefore, the application of non-destructive bio-sensing methods as a promising alternative for evaluating the value of tropical produce has been adopted ( Ndlovu et al., 2022 ; Okere et al., 2022 ).…”

Online Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for the Measurement of Cow Milk Quality in an Automatic Milking System

“…The non-invasive, fast, user-friendly, time saving, and pretreatment-free features of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) makes it an adequate technique for measuring milk quality during the milking process [5][6][7][8][9]. NIRS was used to measure and provide qualitative and quantitative information on agricultural products, including rice, wheat, pomegranate, and carrots [10][11][12][13][14]. NIRS has been used in practice to automatically measure rice quality in Japan [13].…”