Chowdhury 2015
Chowdhury 2015
Chowdhury 2015
Abstract—Electrical Impedance of biological tissues changes properly ripenned to ensure about the developments of all the
with the change in tissue anatomy and tissue physiology. necessary nutrients, though there are few fruits which are also
Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) has been studied to consumed at their earlier age due to the requirement of some
characterize the biological objects like fruits and vegetables for particular nutrients available at that time of their development.
assessing their freshness. In this direction, the EIS studies have As the proper ripening of fruits conforms the maximum
been conducted as a non-destructive investigation evaluation
availability of all the nutrients, the under ripening or over
method to study the electrical impedance variations in banana
ripening. The aim of the work is to correlate the impedance ripening both are not desirable. Therefore, the ripening
variation with the ripening process in banana. A small amount of process of fruits are required to be studied not only to identify
alternating current is injected to the banana attached to an array an optimum ripening state at which all the essential and
of Ag/AgCl electrodes and the surface potentials are measured important nutrients are available at that state, but also the
using Agilent 4294A impedance Analyzer. The banana investigation reveals a lot of information about the
impedance and phase angles are measured from 50 Hz and 1 physiological and biochemical changes inside the fruits.
MHz. The results demonstrate that the electrical impedance of Hence studying the ripening of fruits is very essential which
banana varies significantly during its ripening. From the will not only help the people to have the best fruit quality but
experimental studies, it is observed that the impedance, real part
also it will help the researcher and scientist to analyze the food
and imaginary part of the impedance all are increased with the
progresses in the banana ripening process. quality. Chemical and biochemical analysis can be conducted
to study and evaluate the ripening state and the corresponding
Keywords—Banana, Banana ripening, bioelectrical impedance, fruit quality. But these are all the destructive methods and
electrical impedance spectroscopy, EIS, Nyquist Plots, impedance which cannot be conducted for routine inspection as the
variations. methods are time consuming and destroy to fruits also. Hence
a nondestructive method of fruit ripening analysis is found
1. INTRODUCTION essential to study the fruit ripening state and the fruit nutrients
levels. As the biological tissues are developed with cells
In flowering plants [1], the fruits [1-2] are generally arranged in complex three dimensional array suspended in
developed from some specific tissues. Fruits are not only extracellular fluids, like any other biological object, the fruits
essential to disseminate the seeds but also are very important also produce a complex bioelectrical impedance [6-9] which is
and necessary food materials for human health [3-4]. Fruits not only a function of the applied signal frequency but also is
are found as the biological objects which are developed with a a function of tissue composition, tissue anatomy and tissue
complex structure of several tissues [5] consisting of the tree health. With the change in tissue composition, tissue structure
dimensional arrangement of cells (Fig.1). All the fruits have and tissue health, the electrical impedance of fruits changes.
their own distinct composition and food values such as Moreover as the electrical impedance is a function of applied
nutrients and vitamins [3] and hence they have an important signal frequency, the variation in bioimpedance profile due to
impact on human nutrition and human health [4]. Fruit the changes in tissue properties also changes in different
ripening is a process in which the matured raw fruits undergo frequency ranges. Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS)
through several physiological changes over a certain time [10-18], which measures the variations of electrical impedance
period called ripening period. The ripening process can be over a certain frequency range, is being found suitable for
conducted either by naturally (pre-harvesting ripening i.e. investigating biological tissue noninvasively. EIS measures
during the time when fruits are still attached to the plant) or electrical impedance of an object under test by injecting a
artificially (post-harvesting ripening i.e. during the time when constant amplitude current signal at different frequencies and
fruits have already been detached from the plant). In post- the developed potentials using an electrode array and an EIS
harvesting ripening, the fruits are, generally, required to be instrumentation (Fig.2). EIS has been widely used to
ripened properly, either by normal storage process or characterize the biological tissue in terms of its electrical
artificially by applying some chemical materials internally impedance measured from the boundary voltage current data.
(injection) or externally. Fruits are essentially required to be