Determination of Postharvest Quality of Cucumbers Using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Electronic Nose Combined with Chemometric Methods

The purpose of this study was to investigate changes in water status and flavor characteristics of cucumbers during postharvest storage and to trace the quality attributes using partial least squares (PLS) and support vector machine (SVM). The results showed that four distinct water populations were identified in cucumbers by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and the changes of water mobility and distribution occurred mainly in pulp of cucumbers. Flavor characteristics of cucumbers at different storage stages were distinguished by electronic nose (e-nose), and four clusters could be achieved through hierarchical clustering analysis. Comparison of two models, excellent prediction performances for firmness, pH, SSC, and E of postharvest cucumbers were obtained using a combination method of e-nose technology and SVM algorithm. This study indicated that there were significant changes in the quality parameters of cucumbers during postharvest storage, which were related to water status and flavor characteristics. The combination of e-nose technology with the SVM algorithm offers a promising technique to monitor cucumber quality.