Avocado Fruit Quality Determination Using Parallel Plate at 250 kHz to 2 MHz

The objective of this study is to predict avocados’ ripeness by using a capacitive sensing technique. Each fruit has its unique characteristics mostly based on its sizes, shapes, and properties. Different properties will determine different fruit quality. In this study, the experiment is carried out for 15 days from the day that the avocado is at the unripe stage until it is overripe. The properties of avocado fruit are obtained by using two methods which are destructive and non-destructive. The non-destructive method is referring to capacitive sensing while the destructive methods contain measurement of pH level, Brix level, and moisture content (m.c%), respectively. The result obtained in this study shows that there is a high correlation between the capacitance value of avocado and their properties like sweetness level, pH value, and moisture content. It also shows that the best measurement frequency for avocado is 1MHz. At the end of the project, a GUI application is built to make it a complete system to predict the sweetness and maturity of the fruit non-destructively. In conclusion, the capacitive sensing technique emerges as a robust and effective method for obtaining crucial parameters of avocado fruit quality, offering significant potential for predicting ripening timeframes. This study contributes to the advancement of non-destructive fruit evaluation methodologies and underscores their practical application in the agricultural and food industries.