Abstract
Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy was employed to determine hardness of intact mume fruit. Fruits were supplied to a NIR spectrophotometer and the absorbance at wavelength between 1100 and 2500nm (2nm intervals) was measured. The correlation between hardness values (kg) obtained with hardness meter and those obtained by NIR were examined by multiple linear regression analysis. The strongest correlation was obtained between NIR values predicted by 5-wavelength regression and those obtained with hardness meter. The multiple correlation coefficient was 0. 91 and standard error of prediction was 0.32kg. It was proved that NIR is a useful method for determination of hardness of mume fruit.
