Development stage prediction of flat peach by SVR model based on changes in characteristic taste attributes

Prediction of the development stage of flat peach is very important to determine the harvest time and guarantee high quality peach fruit. The objective of this study was to predict the development stage of flat peach by applying the SVR model based on characteristic taste attributes changes. Seven development stages were divided into immaturity stage (F1-F5) and maturity stage (F6-F7) according to PIs analysis. Both human sensory evaluation and electronic tongue showed that sourness and bitterness significantly decreased, while sweetness increased during seven development stages (P < 0.05). PCA result revealed that sourness and sweetness attributes had a high correlation between human sensory evaluation and electronic tongue. HCA classified seven development stages as two clusters, which was consistent with the PIs analysis. Seven development stages of flat peach were accurately predicted by the SVR model and the correct rate (CR) was 93.9%. The mean squared error (MSE) of each evaluation index was around 0.14 and the squared correlation coefficient (SCC) was over 0.99, which indicated the model performed well. This study proved that taste attribute could be used as an index combined with the SVR model to accurately predict the development stage of flat peach.