Introduction. During ripening, the pigment content, starch index and sugar
content of banana fruit change, providing accurate indicators for maturity classification.
However, at present, banana fruits are traded according to their color stage. This study
is aimed at investigating a non-destructive, rapid instrumental method to measure fruit
maturity and quality more precisely. Materials and methods.Musa cavendishii
L. grown in Honduras were ripened in a commercial ripening chamber and selected at four
different color stages. Visible (VIS) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in reflectance
mode were investigated for the non-destructive detection of fruit chlorophyll and sugar
contents. Partial least squares regression was applied to auto-scaled spectral data. Reference
analyses were performed using spectrophotometry after a diethyl ether extraction of
chlorophyll and high performance liquid chromatography for individual sugar analysis.
Results. Calibration models for spectral readings and laboratory destructive tests gave
multivariate correlation coefficients of determination of $R^2 > 0.70$ for chlorophyll
a, R2 = 0.96 with standard errors of calibration (scal) of 1.6, and standard
errors of cross-validation (scval) of 1.8 for glucose; R2 = 0.94 with scal of 0.8,
and scval of 0.9 for sucrose; R2 = 0.96 with scval of 2.5 and Scval of 2.7
for fructose (g$\cdot$kg-1 on a dry weight basis). Conclusion. This paper
shows the potential of VIS/NIRS for non-destructively predicting the maturity and quality
of whole banana fruit based on determining fruit chlorophyll and sugar contents.