Kiwifruit chilling injury (CI) damage occurs after long-term exposure to low temperature. A non-destructive approach to detect CI injury was tested in the present study, using a laser backscattering image (LBI) technique calibrated with 56 liquid phantoms for providing absorption coefficient (µa) and reduced scattering coefficient (µs'). Calibration of LBI resulted in a true-positive (TP) classification of 91.5% and 65.6% of predicted µs' and µa, respectively. The optical properties of 'SunGold™'and 'Hayward' kiwifruit were analysed at 520 nm with a two-step protocol capturing pre-classification according to the LBI parameters used in the calibration and estimation with the Farrell equation. Severely injured kiwifruit showed white corky tissue and water soaking, reduced soluble solids content and firmness measured destructively. Non-destructive classification results for 'SunGold™' showed a high percentage of TP for severe CI of 92% and 75% using LBI parameters directly and predicted µa and µs' after pre-classification, respectively. The classification accuracy for severe CI 'Hayward' kiwifruit with LBI parameter was low (58%) and with µa and µs' decreased further (35%), which was assumed to be due to interference caused by the long trichomes on the fruit surface.
Keywords: diffusion theory; non-destructive detection; optical phantom; spatially-resolved.