A liquid crystal tunable filter was attached to a cooled CCD camera in order to create a hyper-spectral camera. Spectral images of slices of green- and red-flesh melons were captured at 5 nm intervals over a range of 800nm and 1, 000nm. Twenty-five mm-diameter cylindrical calibration samples were extracted from the above samples. Regression analyses over the spectral images and sugar content data of the calibration samples confirmed that there is a sugar absorption band around 910 nm. In addition, calibration curves between the 2nd derivative absorbance around the sugar absorption band and Brix sugar content were plotted. By applying these calibration curves to each pixel of the spectral images of sample slices, sugar distribution maps for the melons could be developed.
