Accurate Non-Destructive Prediction of Peach Fruit Quality

Peach consumption per capita has been in constant decline in the United States and Europe in recent decades and has continued to drop even with the availability of numerous new cultivars and improved quality traits.  Surveys indicate that this trend is due to immature, overripe and/or tasteless fruit as well as a variety of textural problems associated with interrupted ripening, due to postharvest physiological disorders at the time of consumption.  For increased rates of fresh peach consumption, optimization of fruit quality is a necessity.

Internal quality of peach fruit cannot be improved during postharvest handling, only maintained. Thus, for significant improvement of peach consumer quality, non-destructive, reliable, and accurate models that evaluate the effect of preharvest factors are needed.  These models can help commercial growers and large-scale farmers determine proper harvest time for optimized internal quality, inherently increasing consumer demand for peaches.