The maturity characterization of orange fruit by using high frequency ultrasonic echo pulse method

Idriss Aboudaoud , Bouazza Faiz , El Houcein Aassif , Ali Moudden , Dris Izbaim , Dris El Abassi , Mohamed Malainine

In this present work, our objective is to study the feasibility of the control of the maturity of orange fruit by the ultrasonic echo pulse method with immersion in water. This study relates to two varieties of orange (Navel and Mandarin) which are the most harvested particularly in the region of Souss-Massa-Drâa in Morocco. Contrary to the works already published in this field, we worked in the high frequencies by the means of a focusing transducer with 20MHz as a central frequency. By taking into account the strong attenuation of the ultrasounds in the texture of fruits and vegetables, we limited our study only to the characterization of the external layer called the flavedo characterized by its very small thickness. The use of the high frequencies will allow us a characterization of high resolution of the orange peel with a high space resolution. This control is based mainly on the measure of the ultrasonic parameters eventually velocity and attenuation in order to check the aptitude of this ultrasonic method to detect the degree of maturity of the fruit without passing by penetrometric and biochemical measurements which are mostly correlated with human perception concerning the firmness of the fruit but they are generally destructives.

Mots clés: Oranges fruit; Ultrasound; Non-destructive testing; Maturity and quality control

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Idriss Aboudaoud, Bouazza Faiz, El Houcein Aassif, Ali Moudden, Dris Izbaim, et al.. The maturity characterization of orange fruit by using high frequency ultrasonic echo pulse method. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00810792⟩