Experimental study demonstrates non-destructive monitoring of edible coating integrity and decay in strawberries, highlighting hyperspectral imaging for smart food packaging.
Key Points
To evaluate near-infrared hyperspectral imaging combined with chemometrics as a non-destructive method for assessing edible coating effectiveness and postharvest strawberry quality.
Reviewed literature on edible coatings from 2020 to 2025 and tested a formulation of cassava starch, cellulose, and oregano essential oil on strawberries.
Collected spectral data on coated and uncoated fruit across the 996–2505 nm range over a 10-day storage period.
Employed chemometric models—including PCA, K-means clustering, MCR-ALS, and PLS-DA—to evaluate coating integrity, moisture loss, and surface decay.
Near-infrared hyperspectral imaging accurately discriminated between coated and uncoated strawberry surfaces throughout the 10-day period.
Multivariate models successfully tracked progressive moisture loss and enzymatic browning, showing strong spectral correlation with storage duration.