Design, Construction and Performance Evaluation of a Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) Based Machine Olfaction (Electronic Nose) for Monitoring of Banana Ripeness

Aroma is one of the most important sensory properties of fruits and is particularly sensitive to the changes in fruit compounds. Gases involved in aroma of fruits are produced from the metabolic activities during ripening, harvest, post-harvest and storage stages. Therefore, the emitted aroma of fruits changes during the shelf-life period. The electronic nose (machine olfaction) would simulate the human sense of smell to identify and realize the complex aromas by using an array of chemical sensors. In this research, a low cost electronic nose based on six metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) sensors were designed, developed and implemented and its ability for monitoring changes in aroma fingerprint during ripening of banana was studied. The main components are used in the e-nose system include sampling system, an array of gas sensors, data acquisition system and an appropriate pattern recognition algorithm. Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) technique was used for classification of the extracted features of e-nose signals. Based on the results, the classification accuracy of 97/3% was obtained. Results showed the high ability of e-nose for distinguishing between the stages of ripening. It is concluded that the system can be considered as a nondestructive tool for quality control during banana shelf-life.