Contents 3 FRUIT QUALITY ASSESSMENT

The quality of caraway fruits used in pharmaceutical and food industry is given one of the main criteria - the essential oil content and D-carvone content, respectively. The amount of caraway processed in the pharmaceutical industry reaches 10 - 15 % of total caraway production (Sedlakova et al., 2001). The minimal limit of the essential oil (30 ml.kg"1 of dried drug) and D-carvone content in the essential oils required by the Czech Pharmacopoeia is 50 % (2006). Also, according to European Pharmacopoeia (6th Ed) caraway fruits contain not less than 30 ml.kg 1 of essential oil in dried drug. The specification in the application for designation of origin (PDO) for Czech caraway requires also minimum of 50 % of D-carvone. The steam distillation at Clavenger apparatus and GC methods are required for the assessment by the several standards. Table 6 describes the essential oil content of Czech caraway varieties. 

In many cases, HSI may replace NIR spectrometers to compute concentrations of various compounds or to estimate quality parameters of agricultural and food products. HSI can be used to assess properties as diverse as oil content, moisture, flour yield, softness, sucrose solvent retention capacity, and alpha-amylase activity in grains [26-28] sugar content and maturity of fruits like apple or banana [29-31] drip loss, water-holding capacity, color, pH, and sensory properties of meat [32-39] analysis of mixtures to detect the presence of substances such as, in forages [40], or the concentration of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in designer eggs [41]. 

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