Lycopene detection in cherry tomatoes with feature enhancement and data fusion.

Lycopene, a biologically active phytochemical with health benefits, is a key quality indicator for cherry tomatoes. While ultraviolet/visible/near-infrared (UV/Vis/NIR) spectroscopy holds promise for large-scale online lycopene detection, capturing its characteristic signals is challenging due to the low lycopene concentration in cherry tomatoes. This study improved the prediction accuracy of lycopene by supplementing spectral data with image information through spectral feature enhancement and spectra-image fusion. The feasibility of using UV/Vis/NIR spectra and image features to predict lycopene content was validated. By enhancing spectral bands corresponding to colors correlated with lycopene, the performance of the spectral model was improved. Additionally, direct spectra-image fusion further enhanced the prediction accuracy, achieving R, RMSEP, and RPD as 0.95, 8.96 mg/kg, and 4.25, respectively. Overall, this research offers valuable insights into supplementing spectral data with image information to improve the accuracy of non-destructive lycopene detection, providing practical implications for online fruit quality prediction.