Prediction of ripe-stage eating quality of mango fruit from its harvest quality measured nondestructively by near infrared spectroscopy

A technique to predict eating quality of ripe mango fruit from its harvest quality, measured nondestructively by near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, was successfully developed. The experiment was conducted in the following steps: (i) identification of the harvest indices (harvest quality) by investigating the relation between physico-chemical properties of hard green mango fruit and those of ripe ones using group sampling; (ii) development of NIR calibration equations to predict the harvest quality of hard green mango fruit nondestructively; (iii) examination of a relation between harvest quality and eating quality of the same fruit, and development of an equation to predict the eating quality from the harvest quality. From the above steps, the results obtained were as follows: (i) dry matter (DM) and starch could be used as harvesting indices for hard green mango fruit as they had a strong relationship with the ripe-stage eating quality (soluble solids content: SSC), while individual sugars and fruit density did not; (ii) the NIR calibration equations developed were sufficiently precise for determining DM and starch of hard green mango fruit (SEP: 0.41 wt.% for DM, 1.71 wt.% for starch); (iii) ripe mango fruit would have excellent eating quality and high SSC if the fruit contained sufficient amounts of DM and starch at harvest date, and the SSC of ripe mango fruit could be precisely predicted from the DM and starch measured nondestructively with NIR at harvest.