Slowing down the ripening process of frozen strawberries activates Botrytis Cinerea and Rhizopus mycelium fungus: Inspect through AI-based SSFI model

Abstract

Frozen storage is crucial for maintaining the quality of fruit supplies. The study found that exotic strawberries stored in cold rooms to slow their ripening in supermarkets led to the growth of harmful fungi, rendering them inedible. To detect and trace mouldy fruits using a computer vision inspection system. IA-1 captures images of fruit seeds with a surface texture microscope, while IA-2 documents fungal structures using a bright field microscope. Our MTMID algorithm improves segmentation through self-annotation. We developed a deep learning model called SSFI-YOLO, which achieved a mean Average Precision of 71 %. It has a precision confidence curve of 84 %, a precision-recall curve of 70 %, and an F1 score of 64 %. The model can detect tiny seeds in just 11.3 ms under optimal lighting conditions. We observed mycelium-laden Petri plates over a period of 0–120 h at 25 °C and extracted DNA using PCR sequencing. The ITS test confirmed the presence of Botrytis cinerea in frozen fruit samples. Using ICP-MS, we compared the mineral content of fresh and diseased strawberries, finding a significant decrease in Magnesium (Mg) from 348.104 mg/100 g to 100.833 mg/100 g, Potassium (K) from 684.011 mg/100 g to 520.107 mg/100 g, and Calcium (Ca) from 96.243 mg/100 g to 38.471 mg/100 g. These findings show how a slowed ripening process negatively impacts the nutritional profile of strawberries.