Microwave modeling and experiments for non destructive control improved quality of fruit

Abstract

Dielectric properties or permittivity of agricultural products, such as fruits, are of interest for several reasons. The influence on the complex permittivity of cultivars (varieties), maturation, quality indices (e.g. soluble solids content), moisture or temperature can be used for sensing and monitoring for developing new generation of sensors for improving quality control of agricultural products. The application here concerns the nondestructive control of apples. The main idea of the study is to model, simulate and measure the scattered field in far and near-field zones (excluding the interactive zone) regions of apples to check the feasibility of monitoring apple growth, maturation, quality indices and defects of from scattered field measurements.