To produce high-quality citrus, the harvest time of citrus should be determined by considering its maturity. To evaluate citrus maturity, the Brix/acid ratio, which is the ratio of sugar content or soluble solids content to acid content, is one of the most commonly used indicators of fruit maturity. To estimate the Brix/acid ratio, fluorescence spectroscopy, which is a rapid, sensitive, and cheap technique, was adopted. Each citrus peel was extracted, and its fluorescence value was measured. Then, the fluorescent spectrum was analyzed using a convolutional neural network (CNN). In fluorescence spectroscopy, a matrix called excitation and emission matrix (EEM) can be obtained, in which each fluorescence intensity was recorded at each excitation and emission wavelength. Then, by regarding the EEM as an image, the Brix/acid ratio of juice from the flesh was estimated via performing a regression with a CNN (CNN regression). As a result, the Brix/acid ratio absolute error was estimated to be 2.48, which is considerably better than the values obtained by the other methods in previous studies. Hyperparameters, such as depth of layers, learning rate, and the number of filters used for this estimation, could be observed using Bayesian optimization, and the optimization contributed to the high accuracy.

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Abstract:Monitoring the maturation process of Satsuma mandarin (Citrus unshiu Marc.) by determining the soluble solids (SS) and acid content non-destructively is needed. Fluorescence components potentially offer such means of accessing fruit maturity characteristics in the orchard. The aim of this study was to determine the potential of fluorescence spectroscopy for monitoring the stage of citrus maturity. Four major fluorescent components in peel and/or flesh were found including chlorophyll-a (excitation (Ex) 410 nm, emission (Em) 675 nm) and chlorophyll-b (Ex 460 nm, Em 650 nm),polymethoxyflavones (PMFs) (Ex 260 nm and 370 nm, Em 540 nm), coumarin (Ex 330 nm, Em 400 nm), and a tryptophan-like compound (Ex 260 nm, Em 330 nm). Our results indicated a significant (R 2 = 0.9554) logarithmic ratio between tryptophan-like compoundsExEm and chlorophyll-aExEm with the SS:acid ratio. Also, the log of the ratio of PMFs from the peel (ExExEm was significantly correlated with the SS:acid ratio (R 2 = 0.8207). While the latter correlation was not as strong as the former, it does demonstrate the opportunity to develop a non-destructive field measurement of fluorescent peel compounds as an indirect index of fruit maturity.

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