Completed project
Supply chain quality improvement – technologies and practices to reduce bruising (AV15009)
Publication date: December 5, 2018
Delivery Partner: The Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries
Avocado fruit quality in shops can be improved by identifying and adopting measures that lessen or, ideally, eliminate flesh bruising. This project, which ran from 2016 to 2018, set out to investigate if there are characteristics of the fruit that make them more or less likely to be damaged during handling. In addition, researchers tested tools that shoppers and retail staff could use to determine fruit ripeness without squeezing.
A key finding from the study was that fruit was found to be more resistant to bruising when it was cooled rapidly after harvest. Links were also found between greater bruising susceptibility and low dry matter content, advancing ripeness, post-harvest temperatures above 5°C and post-harvest storage durations of one week or more.
Pre-harvest factors leading to differences in fruit robustness were evidently important contributors to both bruise susceptibility and body rot upon ripening. For example, one of the studies found that a high ratio of nitrogen to calcium (N/Ca) in the fruit was linked to more body rots, although not bruise susceptibility. More work is needed to tease out the relationship between nutrition and poor quality at retail.
The study confirmed that shoppers are major contributors to avocado bruising as they apply compression forces typically ranging from three to 30 Newtons (N) to firm-ripe avocados when assessing ripeness. A ‘slight’ thumb compression of 10N applied to a firm-ripe fruit is enough to cause bruising, expressed within 48 hours at 20°C. It’s here where the use of in-store decision-aid technologies can come into play. The team reviewed 16 tools for assessing avocado ripeness with four evaluated for reliability, ease of operation and maintenance. All were able to discriminate between different avocado stages of ripeness for both ‘Hass’ and ‘Shepard’ fruit. The devices included a handheld FruitFirm meter, a bench top Sinclair IQä Firmness Tester, a Digital Firmness Meter, and a prototype decision aid tool dubbed the ‘Readycado’ developed under project AV12009. In-store consumer testing suggested that the ‘Readycado’ device could be well-received by shoppers.
Knowledge generated by the project was shared with other researchers and with industry stakeholders, including growers, packers, ripeners, retailers, consumers and AAL. Indications are that more can be done to protect fruit from damage during handling.
Grower recommendations
This project was part of a broader supply chain quality-improvement program that has also involved the now-completed Supply chain quality improvement – retailer point of purchase improvements (AV15011) and Supply chain quality improvement – cool chain best practice guidelines (AV15010).
This project was a strategic levy investment in the Hort Innovation Avocado Fund
© 2026 Horticulture Innovation Australia Limited.
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