Specialized optical fiber sensor for nondestructive intrinsic quality measurement of Averrhoa Carambola

Abstract

This paper presents an innovative and low-cost approach for nondestructive fruit quality analysis. The specialized optical fiber sensor developed and presented in this paper used a monochromatic wavelength, rather than a broad spectrum, to measure the intact carambola (star fruit) intrinsic quality, namely pH and firmness. The main objective of this research was to investigate the two optical fiber sensors used in this work, namely, the optical fiber red system (OF-RS) that operated with the peak sensitivity at 635 nm and the optical fiber near the infrared spectroscopy system (OF-NIRS) that operated with the peak sensitivity at 880 nm. Both systems showed good accuracy in the pH and firmness measurement of the intact carambola with the correlation coefficient R over 0.75, and the measurement results were comparable with those of the commercial spectrometer. The best measurement results were obtained using OF-RS (pH: R = 0.876; the root mean square error (RMSE) = 0.211 pH; firmness: R = 0.872; RMSE = 0.909 kgf). © 2013 The Author(s).