Fruit internal defect sorting: rejection makes the rest the best

Retailers commonly stipulate rejection of apple fruit lots with incidence of internal browning. However, the current assessment protocols are based on destructive assessment of a few fruit per lot, and are thus unreliable. The performance of an internal defect sorting system is described in context of assessment of this disorder, in terms of the impact of measurement error, population average and spread on the criterion required for effective sorting. The sorting goal is to maintain the incidence of disorder to a level acceptable to the retailers, while rejecting a minimum number of fruit.