Shelf-life assessment of apricot fruit during cold storage by a portable visible and near-infrared hyperspectral imaging device

Fruit quality control is fundamental in the process of growing, harvesting, and storage because fruits can be subject to mechanical damages, diseases or microbial infections, which could affect food safety and quality, reducing economic benefits. Therefore, a rapid and non-destructive assessment of fruit quality is in great demand by the agrifood industries to enhance the efficiency of the supply chain. In this paper, a portable visible and near-infrared (Vis/NIR) hyperspectral imaging (HSI) device was used to evaluate the shelf-life of apricot fruit during cold storage for 25 days. Moreover, changes in three apricot varieties, external and internal quality properties, such as weight (W), colour (C), and firmness (FF), and different phytochemicals, such as total soluble solids content (TSS), titratable acidity (TA), total phenolic content (TPC), total carotenoid content (TCC), total flavan content (TFC), and antioxidant activity (AA), were monitored at different times. The genotype and the storage time significantly influenced (p ≤ 0.05) the pomological traits and phytochemical content of apricot fruits. Vis/NIR spectra coupled with chemometric analyses discriminated samples in relation to the storage time and the presence of defects (softening, browning or mould). The visualization maps, achieved from highly performing PLS models (R² equal to 0.86, 0.89, 0.87, 0.94, 0.86, 0.81, RMSECV equal to 0.98, 0.68, 0.84, 0.33, 0.96, 1.13 and RPD equal to 2.70, 3.06, 2.78, 4.08, 2.69, 2.31 for FF, TSS, TA, TPC, TCC, and FLC, respectively), allowed to monitor the internal quality of apricot samples. The obtained results pointed out that HSI can be considered as a valuable tool to assessment of apricot fruits during the cold storage.