Carrot volume evaluation using imaging algorithms

Volume represents an important parameter in the evaluation of fruit growth and quality, and can be used as a ripeness index to forecast optimum harvest time. The first prototype towards a fruit volume detector on trees was developed by rotating a charge coupled device (CCD) camera around the produce. The prototype helped to implement new algorithms for predicting the volume of non-regular shaped fruits easier than by conventional methods. It was tested with carrots, due to their non-circular shape and a 0.98 regression coefficient between real and predicted volume was achieved with two different algorithms. (C) 2000 Silsoe Research Institute