Design and development of a LabVIEW-based LED-induced fluorescence spectroscopy system with applications in non-destructive quality assessment of agricultural products

Abstract

Over the past several years, the demand for high quality agricultural products has been remarkably increased. Thus, it is important to use non-destructive methods for product quality monitoring. LED-induced fluorescence spectroscopy has proved its potential for nondestructive detection of some defects in agricultural products, such as tissue browning and bruising. Due to such defects, changes in the polyphenol and chlorophyll contents occur which can be considered as the visible marks of decreasing fruit quality. In the present work, a fluorescence spectrometer (spectrofluorometer) controlled by LabVIEW software was designed and developed. In this spectrometer, a consumer-grade webcam was used as an imaging sensor. The spectrometer was able to measure the fluorescence spectra directly from the fruit and vegetable surface in the desired regions. To do so, the spectrometer was equipped with a suitable fiber-optic probe. The hardware solution was based on data acquisition working on the USB platform and controlled by the application running on the PC. In this system, light emitting diodes with different wavelengths were used as the excitation sources for inducing fluorescence spectra of some famous fruits and vegetables.