QUALITY EVALUATION OF TECHNOLOGY OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS

Quality evaluation of agricultural products has been a subject of interest to many researches for many years. As a results, several nondestructive techniques for quality evaluation of agricultural products have been developed. These methods are based on the detection of various physical properties that correlate well with certain quality factors of the products. This paper presents an overview of various quality evaluation techniques that are based on one of the following properties : density, firmness , vibration characteristic , X-ray and gamma ray transmission, optical reflectance and transmission , electrical properties, aromatic volatile emission, and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). The sophistication of nondestructive methods has evolved rapidly with modern technologies. The use of various modern image acquisition techniques, such as solid state TV camera, line-scan camera, X-ray scanning , ultrasonic scanning and NMR imaging, in conjunction with image-processing te hniques has provided new opportunities for researchers to develop many new and improved techniques for nondestructive quality evaluation of agricultural products.