ABSTRACT
Increased consumer awareness of product quality is making the marketing of food products, ranging from fresh produce to processed foods, very competitive in that maintaining high quality is essential to economic survival in the business. Products may be damaged during harvest and postharvest operations (external defects). Products may also have some internal defects ranging from foreign ma terials (e.g., metal fragments, bone fragments), watercore (e.g., apples), and vari ous neckrots (e.g., onions). These quality defects have a direct adverse effect on the market value of the products. Consumers desire consistent, high-quality products, thus, removal of defective units from the batch becomes absolutely necessary for customer satisfaction--a key to success in any business. X-ray techniques are widely used commercially for detecting bone fragments and other foreign objects in processed foods. Commercial application of x-ray-based tech niques for inspecting fresh foods will likely be realized in the near future.
