Physical Characteristics and Modelling of Sour Cherry Fruit by Geometric Features

Sour cherry is one of the most common and the most ancient fruit crops in the world due to the availability of anthocyanins and flavonoids in its composition, which explain its healing and tonic properties. Along with this, in view of the development of the technical mechanization and automation processes at the enterprises, it becomes expedient to do research aimed at studying some technical characteristics of fruit and their interdependence. It has been found out that sour cherry fruits of different varieties, namely Griot Podbielski, Alfa, Zhadana, Elehantna, Optymistka, Pamiat Artemenko, Chance, Lutovka, Shpanka, have a length and thickness 10 mm, a width – 20 mm, fruit weight – 4.7 g. On average, by varieties of sour cherry fruits have: diameter – 19.5−19.6 mm, projected area – 303.8−320.17 mm2, surface area −120.67 mm2, sphericity – 100.9, aspect ratio – 1.04; fruit volume − 4036 mm3. The peeling and lengthening index is 0.95 and 0.97. Specific heat capacity amounts to 3.77−3.79 kJ/kg°С, heat conductivity – 0.56−0.57 kJ/mˑc°С, when the content of dry soluble substances is equal to 15.8% and that of titrated acids is 1.7%, рН – 4.1 units, density – 2.7 kg/cm2 and the light transmittance coefficient is 37.8%. The results of the evaluation of the physical-chemical factors of different sour cherry varieties make it possible to identify the characteristic indicators and their specific features when choosing the equipment for processing companies. The mathematical models to predict sour cherry quality were devised based on the physical indicators.