Maturity of fruit

Although it appears probable that there is no overall loss of wall polymers, except, perhaps, in the period just preceding full fruit-maturity, and that wall growth is continuous during cell expansion, there is almost certainly a turnover of wall polysaccharides, and the making and breaking of bonds to facilitate wall expansion during the maturation of fruits. The subject of the possible mechanism by which this wall expansion occurs is discussed in the Section that follows. 

The availability of low cost miniaturised spectrophotometers has opened up the possibility of portable devices which can be used directly on field for monitoring the maturity of fruit. 

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]. 

Mesocarp and seeds differ also from each other in the values of rate of their accumulation at successive stages of maturation. Mesocarp exceeds the seeds in this respect by more than one order of magnitude. Moreover, in developing mesocarp, the rate of oil formation constantly increases, whereas in the seeds, a r reaching a maximum, it decreases sharply long before the technical maturity of fruits is achieved [2]. 

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