Potential use of physical measurements including ultrasound for a better mango fruit quality characterization Original Research Article

The potential use of ultrasound measurements, combined with other physical measurements, has been investigated. The good relationship between soluble solids content (SSC) and ultrasonic wave velocity reported in the literature being confirmed by our study, our main goal was to evaluate the added value of ultrasound measurements around 25 MHz for the determination of biochemical compounds responsible of organoleptic quality of mangoes. Among the main sugar constituents of mango juice, only sucrose content prediction was improved by combining SSC and ultrasonic waves velocity using a PLS model (R2 = 0.81, RMSECV = 12.3, bias = 0.10, RPD = 2.3) when compared to the linear model with SSC only (R2 = 0.75, SEP = 14.05, bias = 0.08). The same conclusion was obtained for titratable acidity PLS model using whole fruit hardness, SSC and ultrasonic wave velocity (R2 = 0.82, RMSECV = 1.84, bias = 0.02, RPD = 2.4) compared to the linear model with fruit hardness only (R2 = 0.78, SEP = 2.07, bias = 0.02). However, the added value of ultrasound measurements was not always found to be significant (P = 0.05) when a Wilcoxon statistical tests was conducted on the residuals of the linear and PLS models for both sucrose and titratable acidity.