Impact of vibration on the quality of tomato produced by stimulated transport

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the potential effect of vibration stress during stimulated transport and to evaluate the effect of storage's temperature and duration on weight loss, color changes, firmness, and total soluble solid of tomatoes. Vibration shaker was used to simulate the transport vibration and accelerometer was fixed on different locations inside the container. Tomatoes were divided into 2 groups where the first one stressed for 2 hrs at the frequency of 2.5Hz and the other was not vibrated as a control. All tomatoes were stored at 10 and 22 C for 10 days. Weight loss, color changes, and firmness total soluble solids (TSS) were measured. RGB acquisition system was used to measure color changes on tomato and then analysed by ImageJ software. Lightness, redness, yellowness, purity, saturation, color change and some color indices of tomato were calculated. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyse all obtained data. This research proves that the color, weight, firmness and total soluble solids of tomato altered by the vibration stresses and storage's temperature and duration. Advanced methods and technologies need to be studied regarding temperature storage managements and transportation facilities to reduce the rapid changes of the quality.