Non-destructive prediction of quality of intact banana using spectroscopy

Potential of spectroscopy in the wavelength range of 299–1100 nm for nondestructive prediction of dry matter (DM) content, pH, sweetness (total soluble solids, TSS), and acid–Brix ratio (ABR) for banana was studied to have proper estimation of their maturity and ripening stage. Partial least square (PLS) and multiple linear regression (MLR) employing pre-processing techniques were carried out. PLS models were found to be the best with multiple correlation coefficients for calibration and validation were found to be 0.88 and 0.81 °Brix for TSS, 0.85 and 0.78 for ABR, 0.88 and 0.83 for pH and 0.90 and 0.87% for DM, respectively. The standard errors of calibration, prediction, biases and differences in them were low, which indicated that NIRS has potential to predict maturity and ripening parameters of banana nondestructively.