Measurement of Physical Properties of Korean Garlic for Grade Standard

Garlic is one of the major seasoning vegetables in Korea and consumed mostly in a form of peeled cloves. Conventional Korean standards for garlic grading consist of four classes according to the size of bulb and its shape. Sorting and grading of garlic are manually done but could be in the process of automated mechanization using machine vision system in the near future. The proportion of mass of cloves in a garlic bulb to the volume of the bulb (g/ml) was determined to find out the best way of representing both the quantity and quality of cloves in each bulb. Garlic bulb was assumed as an ellipsoid and its major and minor axis and its height were measured to calculate its volume. The mass proportions and density of a garlic bulb and cloves were measured for four domestic varieties of garlic to propose it as a standard for Korean garlic grading machine.