Effects of apple size on applicability of model for predicting content of sugar based on near infrared spectroscopy
The size difference of the fruit itself results in poor robustness and low accuracy of the mod-el for predicting the content of sugar.Eliminating the influence of fruit size differences is of great signifi-cance to improve the accuracy of fruit sorting models.The NIR spectra of apples with different fruit diame-ters were collected by an online NIR spectroscopy detection device,and the partial least squares(PLS)models of the content of sugar in apple(SSC)were established after various pre-processing of the spectra.The modeling sets in the diameter of apple fruit group with 75-85 mm were used to predict the prediction set samples in the diameter of apple fruit group with 65-75 mm and 85-95 mm,respectively.The modeling and prediction sets in the diameter of apple fruit group with 65-75 mm,75-85 mm,and 85-95 mm were used as the modeling and prediction sets of the mixed size model for predicting the content of sugar in ap-ple,respectively.The model was simplified by using the feature spectral selection algorithm.The correla-tion coefficient Rp was increased from 0.805 to 0.943,the root mean square error value RMSEP was re-duced from 0.778 to 0.480,and the RPD was increased from 0.96 to 3.05 compared with the optimal set of model for predicting the content of sugar in apple established when the modeling set and the prediction set had different fruit diameters.It is indicated that simplifying the general model established can reduce the ef-fects of apple size on the model for predicting the content of sugar in apple and improve the prediction per-formance of the model.