Pomegranate Quality Evaluation Using Non-Destructive Approaches: A Review

Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is one of the most healthful and popular fruits in the world. The increasing demand for pomegranate has resulted in it being processed into different food products and food supplements. Researchers over the years have shown interest in exploring non-destructive techniques as alternative approaches for quality assessment of the harvest at the on-farm point to the retail level. The approaches of non-destructive techniques are more efficient, inexpensive, faster and yield more accurate results. This paper provides a comprehensive review of recent applications of non-destructive technology for the quality evaluation of pomegranate fruit. Future trends and challenges of using non-destructive techniques for quality evaluation are highlighted in this review paper. Some of the highlighted techniques include computer vision, imaging-based approaches, spectroscopy-based approaches, the electronic nose and the hyperspectral imaging technique. Our findings show that most of the applications are focused on the grading of pomegranate fruit using machine vision systems and the electronic nose. Measurements of total soluble solids (TSS), titratable acidity (TA) and pH as well as other phytochemical quality attributes have also been reported. Value-added products of pomegranate fruit such as fresh-cut and dried arils, pomegranate juice and pomegranate seed oil have been non-destructively investigated for their numerous quality attributes. This information is expected to be useful not only for those in the grower/processing industries but also for other agro-food commodities.