Comparison of Instrumental and Manual Inspection of Clingstone Peaches

The flesh color and firmness of 13,140 clingstone peaches were measured instrumentally at the cannery receiving stations and compared with the current official subjective inspection methods of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The instruments evaluated were a nondestructive impact firmness sensor, a traditional destructive penetrometer firmness sensor, and a tristimulus color sensor. Instrumental measurements for flesh color and nondestructive firmness gave good agreement (83% across all cultivars) with the current inspection method in categorizing fruit into both mature or immature, and into firm or soft categories. The study shows that objective instrumental inspection methods hold promise as a replacement for subjective methods presently used in clingstone peach inspection at cannery receiving stations.