Open Access

ARTICLE

Prediction of Apple Fruit Quality by Soil Nutrient Content and Artificial Neural Network

Mengyao Yan¹, Xianqi Zeng¹, Banghui Zhang¹, Hui Zhang², Di Tan¹, Binghua Cai¹, Shenchun Qu¹, Sanhong Wang^1,*

1 College of Horticulture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
2 College of Agriculture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China

* Corresponding Author: Sanhong Wang. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Integrating Agronomy and Plant Physiology for Improving Crop Production)

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany 2023, 92(1), 193-208. https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2022.023078

Received 08 April 2022; Accepted 25 May 2022; Issue published 06 September 2022

Abstract

The effect of soil nutrient content on fruit yield and fruit quality is very important. To explore the effect of soil nutrients on apple quality we investigated 200 fruit samples from 40 orchards in Feng County, Jiangsu Province. Soil mineral elements and fruit quality were measured. The effect of soil nutrient content on fruit quality was analyzed by artificial neural network (ANN) model. The results showed that the prediction accuracy was highest (R²= 0.851, 0.847, 0.885, 0.678 and 0.746) in mass per fruit (MPF), hardness (HB), soluble solids concentrations (SSC), titratable acid concentration (TA) and solid-acid ratio (SSC/TA), respectively. The sensitivity analysis of the prediction model showed that soil available P, K, Ca and Mg contents had the greatest impact on the quality of apple fruit. Response surface method (RSM) was performed to determine the optimum range of the available P, K, Ca, and Mg contents in orchards In Feng County, which were 10∼20 mg⋅kg⁻¹, 170∼200 mg⋅kg⁻¹, 1000∼1500 mg⋅kg⁻¹, and 80∼200 mg⋅kg⁻¹, respectively. The research also concluded that improving the content of available P and available Ca in orchard soil was crucial to improve apple fruit quality in Feng County, Jiangsu Province.

---

Keywords

---