Mass modelling of plum (Prunus domestica L.) fruit with some physical characteristics

Abstract

Horticultural crops with similar weight and uniform shape are in high demand in terms of marketing value in the food sector. The knowledge on existing relationship between the mass, length, width, thickness, volume and projected areas of fruits is useful for proper design of grading machines. A part of this research was aimed to present some physical properties of plum fruit. In addition, in this study the mass of plum fruit was predicted using different physical characteristics in four models, including linear, quadratic, S-curve and power. According to the results, all properties considered in the current study were found to be statistically significant at the 1% probability level. The best and the worst models for predicting the mass of plum fruit were based on geometric mean diameter and length of the plum with determination coefficients of 0.803 and 0.125, respectively. At last, mass model of plum fruit based on first projected area from an economical standpoint is recommended. © 2014 Wageningen Academic Publishers.