Nondestructive Control of Fruit Quality Using Microwaves - Modeling and Experiments with Apples

Abstract

The influence on the complex permittivity of cultivars (varieties), maturation, quality indices (e.g. soluble solids content), moisture or temperature can be used for sensing and monitoring for developing new generation of sensors for a nondestructive control of agricultural products for improving quality. The main application concerns here apples. The study includes modeling, simulations and measurements of the scattered field in far and near-field zones (excluding the interactive zone) regions of apples to check the feasibility of monitoring apple growth, maturation, quality indices and defects.