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Quality
of vegetable and fruit
To
develop nondestructructive, objective, quality indicators for
tomatoes we measured delayed luminescence, firmness, soluble solids,
dry matter, color and respiration during ripening in cherry tomatoes
(Lycopersicon esculentum var.cerasiforme).
They
were harvested in the same
moment at various maturity stages, so they had different initial
colour, and ripened in the dark at 20°C and 80% relative humidity. Starting from the day after the picking and for two weeks,
the respiration, the absolute chromaticity and the delayed
luminescence emitted from the different type of fruits (different
initial ripening stages) have been regularly measured at the same
time.
Ten
days after harvest we observed on fruit showing similar color,
significant differences in the delayed luminescence, soluble solids
and dry matter, directly related to harvest maturity. We suggest
that delayed luminescence can be used as a nondestructive indicator
of important indicators of tomato fruit quality.
This results let to think about the possibility of
establishing a correlation between respiration and delayed
luminescence, whose parameters are dependent on the initial ripening
stage of the fruits. So it could be possible to define a parameter
"quality of food", since it is known that the composition
(i.e soluble solids, dried substance, etc.) of the fruit depend on
its initial ripening stage. |
Viability
of seeds
We
are exploring the possibility of using the parameters connected to
Delayed Luminescence (DL) to detect stress conditions in various
kind of seeds. At this moment a phenomenological relationship
between the total re-emission and the growth velocity was found for
Soya and Pepper seeds. On the basis of our results it seems that a
"quantitative" relation does exist between the
physiological state of the samples and the DL. This fact has
important practical consequences because the DL technique can be
considered a good one to evaluate the vitality and viability of
seeds, with the advantage that the test, performed on dry seeds, is
fast and non destructive.
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