A METHOD TO SET-UP CALIBRATION CURVE FOR INSTRUMENTED SPHERE IS100 TO CONTROL MECHANICAL DAMAGE DURING POST-HARVESTING AND HANDLING OF ORANGES

Oranges quality is strictly dependent on their variety, pre-harvest and post-harvest practices. Especially post harvest management is responsible for fruits damages, causing quality deterioration and commercial losses, as underlined by many authors, which studied the influence of individual post harvest operations on the fruit quality. In this article Authors, using an instrumented sphere (IS 100) similar for shape and size to a true orange, showed a method for the control of orange damages along the processing line. Results allow a fundamental knowledge about the critical damage curve, which defines the incidence of the damages during the oranges processing and packaging. Data show that the fruit discharge (bins or boxes discharge) and the packaging step are the most critical operations in order to reduce or eliminate the fruits collisions and the consequent damage