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Through the latest NIR (Near Infra Red) technology, packhouses can now sort their produce not just by size and color, but by indicators of produce taste. This is done without damaging produce as no mechanical mechanism touches the individual fruit. Brix is a measure of the percent of solids in a given weight of plant juice. It is often expressed as equaling the pounds of sucrose, fructose, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, proteins and other solids in one hundred pounds of a particular plant juice.
Brix varies directly with plant quality. For instance, a sour-tasting grape from worn out land can test 8 or less for brix. A sweet-tasting grape grown on rich fertile soil can test 24 or better for brix. Similarly, a tasteless, almost bitter cantaloupe melon has a far lower reading than a sweet, 18-brix cantaloupe.
Compac Sorting Equipment Ltd uses the products and services of Taste Technologies Ltd from New Zealand to provide brix sorting equipment on its sorting machines.
Taste Technologies Ltd provide brix sorting that …
- Is effective at commercial packing speeds
- Provides superior accuracy
- Interfaces with most existing and new sorting machines
- Places control in the user's hands
- Provides solutions for all varieties of fruits
- Does not damage produce
- Is supported by a unique marketing program - TasteMark™
Learn more about Taste Technologies Ltd and TasteMark at www.tastemark.com
How does NIR brix sorting work?
NIR sorting equipment is set up on each lane of a sorting machine. As the fruit is being graded, the NIR sorting equipment works as follows.
A light source is focused to illuminate a piece of fruit as it passes under the NIR system. Some of the light penetrates the fruit and is retransmitted. (This effect can be observed by holding a fruit to a bright lamp in a dark room. The fruit will glow at a distance from where the light is shining on it.) The color of the transmitted/reflected light is affected by the internal properties of the fruit. A high brix fruit will absorb more light at certain wavelengths than a low brix fruit.
This color difference, too subtle to be seen by the human eye, contains information about the internal properties of the fruit.
The fruit reflection is measured by a spectrometer. This is an extremely sensitive color detector, used to measure the color difference in the transmitted reflected light. A digital signal processor (DSP) is used to process the information from the spectrometer and estimate the brix acid or other internal properties. The information is processed by the Internal Quality Sorting software and used as part of the fruit sorting information.
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