X-ray assessment of translucency in pineapple

A nondestructive method for detection of translucency, a physiological disorder in pineapple, would be beneficial to the industry. Ninety-two pineapples were imaged with X-ray to determine whether translucency could be detected. After imaging, each pineapple was cut open to determine the true level of the disorder and rated on a scale from 1 (no translucency) to 5 (extremely translucent). The X-ray images were inspected by human subjects who evaluated them as either good or bad based on the appearance of translucent and nontranslucent pineapples in training images. The results show a high correlation (R-2 = 0.96) between the likelihood of a sample being rated as good and the actual level of translucency observed. Samples with no translucency were correctly identified 95% of the time, while those with extreme translucency were correctly identified 86% of the time. The results indicate that X-ray imaging is a useful method for selecting either pineapples that are most likely to be free of translucency or those that are most likely to be extremely translucent.