Search

In the present study, in the first step, the effect of Aloe vera gel (75% v/v) coating containing different concentrations of hemp seed oil (1-5% v/v) on some physicochemical properties of cherry tomatoes during storage at room temperature was investigated. The results revealed the ability of hemp seed oil to improve the physicochemical properties of cherry tomatoes during storage, although no significant difference was observed between 3 and 5% levels of hemp seed oil (p> 0.05). Slope change in the ripening index trend occurred for A. vera gel (75% v/v) coated sample on day 12 and for A. vera gel containing 3% hemp seed oil coated sample on day 16. Using an image processing system, the changes of the coated samples were evaluated based on the color statistical and color texture features extracted from the images and were graded through different procedures. The results showed that the principal component analysis (PCA) and artificial neural network (ANN) methods were able to divide the cherry tomatoes into intact and blemished grades which the ANN method was graded samples using color texture features with higher accuracy (97.41%). The adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) method had higher diagnostic power than the other two methods and was able to grade the samples into three grades including intact, grade 2 and unusable with accuracy of 98.96%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important to control the ripening stages of agricultural products during storage and their quality grading based on their ripening stage. Edible coatings can prolong the storage life of agricultural products and protect them through the handling, storage, processing and marketing. The purpose of the current study was to develop an artificial vision system for quality control and segregation of cherry tomatoes in two different conditions including with and without Aloe vera gel coating. For this purpose, physicochemical properties including titrable acidity, total soluble solids and firmness of cherry tomatoes were measured in both conditions. Based on these properties, the ripening index (RPI) was determined and the samples were classified to MS1 and MS2 according to the ripening stage. Subsequently, the samples were classified using color features,color texture features separately and their combination through principal component analysis (PCA) and back propagation neural network (BPNN). Classification results showed that the use of color and color texture features combination made the classification more accurate; PCA and BPNN methods were able to segregate the samples with high accuracy (85.72 and 98.21, respectively) using the 21 color and color texture features. The higher accuracy of the BPNN method is due to its nonlinear performance. The results of this study indicate that Aloevera gel is promising in delaying the ripening process of cherry tomatoes and artificial vision system can be used as a non-destructive method for evaluation of cherry tomato ripening level based on the color and color texture features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]