Baek, S.; Lim, J.; Lee, J.G.; McCarthy, M.J.; Kim, S.M. Investigation of the Maturity Changes of Cherry Tomato Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Appl. Sci.2020, 10, 5188.
Baek, S.; Lim, J.; Lee, J.G.; McCarthy, M.J.; Kim, S.M. Investigation of the Maturity Changes of Cherry Tomato Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 5188.
Baek, S.; Lim, J.; Lee, J.G.; McCarthy, M.J.; Kim, S.M. Investigation of the Maturity Changes of Cherry Tomato Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Appl. Sci.2020, 10, 5188.
Baek, S.; Lim, J.; Lee, J.G.; McCarthy, M.J.; Kim, S.M. Investigation of the Maturity Changes of Cherry Tomato Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 5188.
Abstract
The maturity of tomato fruit is normally characterized by external color and it is often difficult to know when fruit have achieved commercial maturity or become over-mature. The internal structure of tomato fruit change during development and this study investigates the utility of nondestructive measurement of tomato fruit structure as a function of maturity using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The objective of this work is to use analysis of internal tomato fruit structural measurements to characterize maturity. Intact cherry tomato fruit were harvested at six different maturity stages. At each stage of maturity, the internal structure of the fruit was measured using a series of 2D magnetic resonance (MR) images. Qualitative and quantitative image analyses were performed to correlate internal fruit structure with maturity. Internal structural changes observed in the pericarp region of the tomato fruit are highly correlated with fruit maturity. MR image information combined with classical analysis techniques provides a more complete understanding of structure and physicochemical changes in tomato fruit during maturation. This study demonstrates that MRI is a useful analytical tool to characterize internal changes in agricultural produce as the produce matures. This technique can be applied to almost any agricultural produce to monitor internal physical changes due to external impact, maturity stage, variation in climate, storage time and condition or other factor impacting quality.
Keywords
magnetic resonance imaging; cherry tomato; maturity change; internal structure
Subject
Physical Sciences, Applied Physics
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
