Study on rapid valid acidity evaluation of apple by fiber optic diffuse reflectance technique

Some issues related to nondestructive evaluation of valid acidity in intact apples by means of Fourier transform near infrared (FTNIR) (800-2631nm) method were addressed. A relationship was established between the diffuse reflectance spectra recorded with a bifurcated optic fiber and the valid acidity. The data were analyzed by multivariate calibration analysis such as partial least squares (PLS) analysis and principal component regression (PCR) technique. A total of 120 Fuji apples were tested and 80 of them were used to form a calibration data set. The influence of data preprocessing and different spectra treatments were also investigated. Models based on smoothing spectra were slightly worse than models based on derivative spectra and the best result was obtained when the segment length was 5 and the gap size was 10. Depending on data preprocessing and multivariate calibration technique, the best prediction model had a correlation efficient (0.871), a low RMSEP (0.0677), a low RMSEC (0.056) and a small difference between RMSEP and RMSEC by PLS analysis. The results point out the feasibility of FTNIR spectral analysis to predict the fruit valid acidity non-destructively. The ratio of data standard deviation to the root mean square error of prediction (SDR) is better to be less than 3 in calibration models, however, the results cannot meet the demand of actual application. Therefore, further study is required for better calibration and prediction.