Non-destructive morphological screening for the assessment of postharvest storage effect on pears stored with apples using optical coherence tomography

The use of a limited and inadequate storage facility for the storage of multiple food items for an extended period of time results in the loss of structural integrity and freshness while storing fruit in confined single storage without adequate individual packaging methods can result in morphological changes and the degradation of the quality of the fruit. In this study, the effects of postharvest storage on pears co-stored with apples were investigated via non-invasive screening of the structural deformation of pears and the respective anatomical changes of the sub-surface. The anatomical changes were monitored for a prolonged time (12 d) under inadequate and confined storage conditions using swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) and the results were comparatively analyzed using appropriately stored specimens. In addition, the OCT cross-sectional images were analyzed for the assessment of the dispersed intensity profile using a customized intensity-based image-processing algorithm. The results revealed the internal morphological variations and corresponding intensity fluctuations, thickness variations, and internal gap formations. This confirmed the potential applicability of OCT as a real-time, non-invasive high-resolution assessment technique for determining fruit quality in diverse environments, such as post-harvest storage and transportation systems.