2013 ASHS Annual Conference

The ability of X-rays to traverse through matter and reveal hidden contaminants or defects has led to their extensive use in manufacturing industries for quality control inspection. The difficulties inherent in the detection of defects and contaminants in food products have kept the use of X-ray in that industry limited mainly to the packaged foods sector. Nevertheless, the need for nondestructive inspection of horticultural crops for defects and contaminants has motivated a considerable research effort spanning many decades. Improvements in technology, especially more compact and affordable high voltage power sources, high speed computing, and high resolution detector arrays, have made many X-ray detection tasks possible today that were previously unfeasible. These improvements can be expected to continue into the future.