Tomato Ripening Process Is Super Weak Luminescence

All living systems spontaneously emit low-intensity luminescence. Such photon emission is inherently associated with many fundamental processes in biological systems and closely connected with many important biological functions. Examples from organisms and living systems show that ultra-weak photon emission is an exciting area of research with potential future applications in biology, medicine, pharmacology, environmental sciences and food technology.In the research of food technology, how to test the quality of the fruit by using ultra-weak bio-photon emission is one of the hot researches. The main aim of the study is to establish a new method based on the ultra-weak bio-photon emission to detect the quality of fruit. The character of this method is non-destructive, convenient and precise.The main content is as follows:1. The testing system of the Single-Photon-Count was established and the ultra-weak photon emission of tomato without any disturbance was detected.2. Detect the spontaneous ultra-weak photon emission of tomato and another three parameters, such as ethylene, carbon dioxide and chroma under different environments of 28℃ and 4℃ respectively.3. After being induced by different light: fluorescent lamp, tungsten lamp and high-voltage sodium lamp, the light-induced ultra-weak bio-photon emission of tomato under different environments of and 4℃ will be detected respectively.The results of this research are as follows:1. Under the environment of 28℃, the release of ethylene reached its climax on the fourth day and carbon dioxide on the sixth day, the curve of the spontaneous ultra-weak photon emission just consists with that of the carbon dioxide. At the same time, chroma has a turnabout from kelly to salmon pink. All these indicate that the tomato has reached maturity.2. Under the environment of 4℃, the data of ethylene, carbon dioxide andchroma have changed a little, the spontaneous ultra-weak photon emission hasn't researched its climax yet. This indicates that the tomato hasn't completed the process of maturity.3. Under the environment of 28℃ and 4℃, we simulated all the curve of induced ultra-weak photon emission of tomatoes which were stimulated by fluorescent lamp, tungsten lamp and high-voltage sodium lamp respectively, and we found that two-exponential function is the best, which indicates that there are two main systems in the light-induced ultra-weak photon emission.