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Non-destructive estimation of the constituent properties of fruits and vegetables has led to a dramatic change in the agriculture and food industry, allowing accurate and efficient sorting of the products based on their internal properties. Therefore, the present study utilized visible (VIS) and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy data in the range from 200 to 1100 nm for the estimation of several properties of Red Delicious apples, namely Brix minus acid (BrimA), firmness, acidity and starch content, using a hybrid of Artificial Neural Networks and Artificial Bee Colony (ANN–ABC) algorithm. Furthermore, the hybrid Artificial Neural Network–Particle Swarm Optimization (ANN–PSO) algorithm was utilized to select the most effective properties to estimate these characteristics. The results indicated that there are different peaks within this spectral range, and the spectral range for each peak gives different results. To ensure the stability of the proposed method, 1000 replications were performed for each estimate. The highest coefficients of determination, R2, for estimating the studied properties among the 1000 replicates were 0.898 for BrimA, 0.8 for firmness, 0.825 for acidity and 0.973 for starch content. The selection of the most effective wavelengths for estimating the properties produced five effective wavelengths for BrimA, nine for firmness, seven for acidity and five for starch content. In this case, the best R2 of the hybrid ANN–ABC among the 1000 iterations were 0.828, 0.738, 0.9 and 0.923, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]