Scattering through fruits during ripening: laser speckle technique correlated to biochemical and fluorescence measurements.

ABSTRACT

This paper reports monitoring fruits maturation using speckle technique. Performed measurements aim the assessing of biological inner fruit variation effect on the speckle image. We show that the speckle grain size is both affected by the glucose level inside the fruits and by the chlorophyll content. Moreover, the determination of circular polarization degree and circular grain size indicate that a Rayleigh diffusion regime gradually becomes predominant in fruits. Principal component analysis is used to highlight high correlation between results and strengthen the establishment of speckle as a novel non invasive method to monitor fruits ripening.