ABSTRACT
The continuous increase of consumer demand for quality produce has maintained the fresh fruit and vegetable postharvest sector in constant growth and development. The scarceness of labor in developed countries associated to the possibility of reducing labor costs has led to an intensive increase in mechanization and automation in the sector. Parameters that are involved in the evaluation of quality in fresh fruits and vegetables include firmness, skin, and flesh color, ethylene production, respiration rate, sugars, organic acids, pigments, phenolic, and volatile compounds, among others. This chapter presents an overview of applications of spectroscopic methods to the analysis of fruits and vegetables. Among the available techniques, near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy has been the most extensively employed, with many studies focusing on quality evaluation. Studies on the use of spectroscopic methods applied to the analysis of fruits and vegetables have focused on NIR, although other methods such as nuclear magnetic resonance, Fourier transform infrared, Raman, and fluorescence spectroscopy have also been employed.
