During transport the quality of fruits is influenced by vibration, road conditions, shipment distance, and other factors. To better understand these sources of losses, the present study measures the level of vibration involved in the refrigerated transport of strawberries in a truck under road conditions corresponding to, a plain road, a slope road, a road with joints, one over a bridge and one through a tunnel. In the laboratory experiment, controlled vibration was given to the strawberries

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... m a machine. This machine was operated with a vibration pattern obtained in an earlier test where strawberries were transported by a truck from Saga to Osaka on the highway. From measurements of the sugar and ascorbic acid contents the quality of strawberries treated with vibration, has been observed to deteriorate remarkably compared to that without any such treatment. Among three positions on the pallet of the truck, the position-2 was mainly analyzed. The power spectrum is found to peak at 3.35 Hz for the plain road and the corresponding acceleration ranges between about 0.0 to 2.0 m/sec2. The power spectrum has been found to be different for different road conditions.