Investigating the Effects of Qualitative Properties on Pears Dielectric Coefficient

Abstract

Nowadays, the dielectric properties of food and biological products have become a valuable parameter in foodstuff engineering and coating technology, covering a remarkable spectral domain from 10-6 to 1012. In the present study, 27 completely healthy pears were selected and subjected to quasi-static and dynamic loading. The storage period was ten days. In this study, the qualitative characteristics and their relationship with changes in dielectric coefficient were investigated. At the end of the storage period, the fruits’ dielectric coefficient values and their qualitative characteristics were measured. The measurements were carried out for a capacitor plates’ distance interval of 11 cm, 10 V input voltage and 60 kHz input voltage frequency. According to the results, in the dynamic loading mode of 400 N, the highest dielectric coefficient with a value of 5.2989 was obtained. In dynamic loading mode of 400 N, the qualitative property had the minimum value. The antioxidant, phenol content, Vitamin C content and firmness were 33.925%, 14.523 mg/100g, 5.7 mg/100g and 5.5333 g, respectively. The results of the study indicated that increasing the loading force on the pear reduces all qualitative indicators for all loading modes and an increase in dielectric coefficients of the products was observed.

Keywords

• dielectric
• nondestructive test
• pears
• quality
• qualitative properties