Technological Methods of Assessing the Maturity of Tomatoes

Abstract

Tomato maturity is one of the most important indicators related to determining its quality. The maturity assessment of tomatoes is necessary to determine the timing of fruit harvesting, optimize storage conditions, forecast storage periods, export, and more. Over the past three decades, researchers have developed a number of methods for evaluating the quality and sorting of tomato fruits. (Research purpose) The research purpose is in providing an overview of the technological methods used to measure the maturity of tomatoes. (Materials and methods) The article presents methods (spectral, hyperspectral imaging, luminescent, laser, technical vision, and others) for non-destructive assessment of the quality of tomato fruits. (Results and discussion) It was found that the main drawback of the described devices is that only a small part of the fetal surface is controlled by photodetectors. It was pointed out that most of the flow reflected from the fruit, and therefore information about the color of its surface is lost, bypassing the photodetectors and being absorbed by the walls of the camera. Authors found that the quality of fraction selection can be improved if several spectral sections are filtered out from the rays reflected from the fruit. It was found that with the three or more sections, designs of photometric systems are significantly complicated, since there is a need to have a large number of optical receivers. (Conclusions) The article proposes a technology for measuring the maturity of tomatoes using the luminescent method, which is less time-consuming and more accurate than methods for determining the maturity of tomatoes by their color. Authors found that this technology allows to separate tomatoes with any color according to the maturity. The article shows that the considered method makes it possible to divide tomatoes more efficiently by maturity, taking into account their internal structure.