• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.45-50
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• 2008

Shock and vibration inputs are transmitted from the transporting vehicle through the packaging box to the fruit. The vibration causes sustained bouncing of fruits against each other and the container wall. The steady state vibration input may cause serous fruit injury, and the damage is particularly severe if the fruits are bounced at its resonance frequency. The determination of the resonance frequencies of the fruits and vegetables may help the packaging designer to design the proper packaging system providing adequate protection of the fruits from external impact or shock. In this study, to analyze the vibration properties of the apples for optimum packaging design during transportation, the random vibration tests were carried out. From the results of random vibration test, the resonance frequency and power spectral density (PSD) of the packaged freight of apples in the test were in the range of 82 to 97 Hz and 0.0013 to 0.0021 $G^2/Hz$ respectively and the resonance frequency and PSD of the packaged apples were in the range of 13 to 71 Hz and 0.0143 to 0.0923 $G^2/Hz$ respectively.

• Food Science and Biotechnology
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.896-901
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• 2006

Patulin is a food mycotoxin which induces genotoxicity and acute intestinal disease in infants. Patulin mainly originates from fruit putrefactive moulds, especially in apples, which necessitates the maintenance of strong safety standards against patulin for fresh and processed apples. To investigate the patulin producing moulds in Korean apples, 16 morphological types of fungi were isolated from Korean apples and a patulin producing fungus was identified based on a sequence analysis of the region of internal transcribed spacers (ITS5-5.8S-ITS4 region, 505 base pair) and the 26 rRNA D1/D2 region (527 base pair). Morphological analyses were also performed. The isolated patulin producing fungus was found to a representative species of Penicillium crustosum. The maximal patulin production ability of the isolated fungus (P. crustosum) and the patulin producing standard strain (P. griseofulvum, ATCC 46037) in an SY broth medium were 0.32 and 2.46 mg/L, respectively.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.192-198
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• 2013

Purpose: Methods for non-destructive estimation of product quality have been reported in various industrial fields, but the application of ultrasonic techniques for the agricultural products of potatoes, pears, apples, watermelons, kiwis and tomatoes etc. have been rarely reported since the application of a contact-type ultrasonic transducer in agricultural products is very difficult. Therefore, this study sought to determine the firmness of apples using non-contact ultrasonic techniques. Methods: For this experiment, an ultrasonic experimental tester using a non-contact ultrasonic transducer was created, and a signal processing program was used to analyze the acquired ultrasonic reflected signal. Also, a universal testing machine was used to measure firmness parameters of the apples such as bioyield strength, a firmness factor, after the ultrasonic tests had been performed. Results: Six distance correction factors were calculated to obtain consistent values of ultrasonic properties regardless of the distance between the transducer and the surface of the subject. We developed prediction models of the bioyield strength using the distance correction factors. Conclusions: The optimum prediction model of the bioyield strength of apples using a non-contact ultrasonic technique was a multiple regression model ($R^2=0.9402$).

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 2000.11b
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• pp.204-209
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• 2000

At harvest, the starch contents of apples, which were related to their maturity, were quantified by using image analysis. The stained area was measured by a computer vision system when an apple slice was stained with KI/I$_2$ solution. The stained area ratio of the stained area of the apple slice to its whole area, or the starch index, was defined as an indicator of starch content. When Tsugaru apples were manually sorted into immature, turning and mature groups, their starch indices were 0.374, 0.312 and 0.129, respectively. Meanwhile, the starch index had correlation to various physicochemical properties of Tsugaru apples. At the statistically significant level of 0.1 %, it was correlated with the pH value, bio-yield force, rupture force and color of intact and skin-removed apples. At the 1 ％ significant level, it had the correlation with the density and moisture content.

• Near Infrared Analysis
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.23-26
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• 2000

The objectives of this study were to examine the ability to predict soluble solid and firmness in intact apple based on the visible/near-infrared spectroscopic technique. Two cultivars of apples, Delicious and Gala, were handled, tested and analyzed. Reflectance spectra, Magness-Taylor (MT) Firmness, and soluble solids in apples were measured sequentially. Maximum and minimum diameters, height, and weight of apples were recorded before the MT firmness tests. Apple samples were divided in to a calibration set and a validation set. The method of partial least squares (PLS) analysis was used. a unique set of PLS loading vectors (factors) was development for soluble solid and firmness. The PLS model showed good relationship between predicted and measured soluble solids in intact apples in the wavelength range of 860∼1078 nm. However, the PLS analysis was not good enough to predict the apple firmness.

• Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.38-42
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• 2000

Though the freshness for agricultural products is an important factor related to their quality management, this terminology is being used restrictedly because it is very subjective. In this study, a dimensionless index which had the span of the maximum of 1 through the minimum of 0 was proposed to describe freshness of the product with time-variant quality and was applied to Tsugaru and Fuji apples. First, the compressive properties having the linearity in their change regarding time elapsed after harvest were selected. For Tsugaru apple, bio-yield and rupture forces had high correlation with time while for Fuji, bio-yield and rupture deformations had high correlations. When the slope, or ratio of force to deformation, was considered, the effect of cultivar could be neglected. When the linearly time-variant compressive properties for Tsugaru and Fuji apples were involved in the freshness indices, they described well freshness of apples. Also, the freshness decay constant depicted a characteristic which related to freshness decay rate. Therefore, the freshness index can be utilized to manage the quality during storage and distribution of apples.

• Journal of the East Asian Society of Dietary Life
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.343-347
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• 2004

Abundant amounts of unripe apples, which were picked out before maturation, were abolished every year fer wastes. Since unripen apples are known to be rich in functional components, the ultimate objective of this research was to utilize them for food resources. The concentrations of polyphenols in hot water extract were the lowest, those in 75% acetone extract the highest. Concentrations of polyphenols in 5/30 sample were 3.5 times higher than those in 6/30 sample regardless of solvents used for extraction. The degree of condensation of flavanolic tannins in the peel was lower than those of the other parts, and the hot water extract was more condensed than the acetone extract. The amount of total flavonoids in the peel and 5/30 samples were 2.7 and 5.0 times higher than those of the flesh and 6/30 samples, respectively.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.234-239
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• 1998

In non-destructive evaluation of free acid content in apples by near- infrared spectroscopy(NIRS), browning and heat treatment of squeezed apple juice affected to the accuracy but titrable alkali concentration did not. The free acid content in apples after harvest was able to determine using different apples in harvest time for calibration making. The result of MLR, multiple correlation coefficient(R) was 0.77 and standard error of prediction(SEP) was 0.03%. The free acid content in apples during storage was able to determine using calibration equation established with stored apples, R was 0.90 and SEP was ca. 0.04%. The prediction accuracy by LAIR was not sufficient for use of quantitative analysis of free acid content in apple, but classification of law and high level in acid content was supposed to be applicable.

• Current Research on Agriculture and Life Sciences
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.272-279
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• 2013

The dissipation patters of the triazole fungicides flusilazole and myclobutanil in apples were investigated to establish the biological half-lives and pre-harvest residue limits (PHRLs). The residual amounts of the fungicides sprayed with single or triple doses were below the maximum residue limits (MRL) for apples established by Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. The dissipation constants of the fungicides in the apples were 0.0513 for flusilazole and 0.0244 for myclobutanil meaning their biological half-lives were calculated as 6.2-6.7 days for flusilazole and 13.3-24.8 days for myclobutanil. The PHRLs calculated using the dissipation constants indicated that the residual amounts of flusilazole and myclobutanil in the apples at the harvesting date would be below the MRLs if their residual amounts were 0.43 and 0.59 mg/kg, respectively, at 7 days prior to harvesting the apples.

• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.1-16
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• 1999

In this study, questionnaire were made to environment-friendly producers of apples regarding farm management methods in low-input production method. utilizing organic materials, production and marketing of apples with lower agricultural chemical residues. Besides, five apples farms were visited to find out their management situation by employing the low-input production method in order to protect the environment as well as consumer's health. Those five low-input apple farms were scattered in Kyungbuk, Chungnam, and Chonnam Provinces, There were not many low-input apple farms across the nation from the beginning and, as a result, increasing the sample size was basically very difficult. Most of these farms were using 140hrs of labor per 10a, of which 30hrs in pre-season management, 25hrs in plowing and weed control, 15hrs in disease and pest control, 20hrs in harvest and marketing and 50hrs in miscellaneous activities. Relatively, pest control takes much time in that they would spray pesticides 7-10 times a season to control the apple disease, 9 times on the average. The average gross revenue of low-input apple farms was about \2,000,000/10a, and their average yield was 2,000kg/10a, which are 25% and 13% lower, respectively, than the ordinary apple production case. This means the low-input farmers are inefficient in marketing their products. On the other hand, their production costs were 20.4% higher than the ordinary apple farms on the average. Since the imported foreign fruits including apples must use various agricultural chemicals on their way to the export markets, the domestic low-input apples have competitive edge over them in therms of food safety. In order to improve the low-input apple industry, active cooperation is needed among the producers, government and researchers more than ever. Among other things, production cost reduction and quality improvement with lower chemical residues are part of the urgent matters to be done.