Studying the Electrical Impedance Variations in Banana

Ripening Using Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS)

A. Chowdhury1, T. K. Bera2, D. Ghoshal3 and B. Chakraborty4
1,3
Dept. of Electronics & Communication Engineering, N.I.T. Agartala, Tripura, India
2
Dept. of Medical Electronics, B.M.S. College of Engineering (B.M.S.C.E.), Bangalore, India.
4
Dept. of PHE, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, B.C.K.V, West Bengal, India.

Corresponding Author: tkbera77@gmail.com

Abstract—Electrical Impedance of biological tissues changes
with the change in tissue anatomy and tissue physiology.
Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) has been studied to
characterize the biological objects like fruits and vegetables for
assessing their freshness. In this direction, the EIS studies have
been conducted as a non-destructive investigation evaluation
method to study the electrical impedance variations in banana
ripening. The aim of the work is to correlate the impedance
variation with the ripening process in banana. A small amount of
alternating current is injected to the banana attached to an array
of Ag/AgCl electrodes and the surface potentials are measured
using Agilent 4294A impedance Analyzer. The banana
impedance and phase angles are measured from 50 Hz and 1
MHz. The results demonstrate that the electrical impedance of
banana varies significantly during its ripening. From the
experimental studies, it is observed that the impedance, real part
and imaginary part of the impedance all are increased with the
progresses in the banana ripening process.
Keywords—Banana, Banana ripening, bioelectrical impedance,
electrical impedance spectroscopy, EIS, Nyquist Plots, impedance
variations.
1. INTRODUCTION
In flowering plants [1], the fruits [1-2] are generally
developed from some specific tissues. Fruits are not only
essential to disseminate the seeds but also are very important
and necessary food materials for human health [3-4]. Fruits
are found as the biological objects which are developed with a
complex structure of several tissues [5] consisting of the tree
dimensional arrangement of cells (Fig.1). All the fruits have
their own distinct composition and food values such as
nutrients and vitamins [3] and hence they have an important
impact on human nutrition and human health [4]. Fruit
ripening is a process in which the matured raw fruits undergo
through several physiological changes over a certain time
period called ripening period. The ripening process can be
conducted either by naturally (pre-harvesting ripening i.e.
during the time when fruits are still attached to the plant) or
artificially (post-harvesting ripening i.e. during the time when
fruits have already been detached from the plant). In post-
harvesting ripening, the fruits are, generally, required to be
ripened properly, either by normal storage process or
artificially by applying some chemical materials internally
(injection) or externally. Fruits are essentially required to be
properly ripenned to ensure about the developments of all the
necessary nutrients, though there are few fruits which are also
consumed at their earlier age due to the requirement of some
particular nutrients available at that time of their development.
As the proper ripening of fruits conforms the maximum
availability of all the nutrients, the under ripening or over
ripening both are not desirable. Therefore, the ripening
process of fruits are required to be studied not only to identify
an optimum ripening state at which all the essential and
important nutrients are available at that state, but also the
investigation reveals a lot of information about the
physiological and biochemical changes inside the fruits.
Hence studying the ripening of fruits is very essential which
will not only help the people to have the best fruit quality but
also it will help the researcher and scientist to analyze the food
quality. Chemical and biochemical analysis can be conducted
to study and evaluate the ripening state and the corresponding
fruit quality. But these are all the destructive methods and
which cannot be conducted for routine inspection as the
methods are time consuming and destroy to fruits also. Hence
a nondestructive method of fruit ripening analysis is found
essential to study the fruit ripening state and the fruit nutrients
levels. As the biological tissues are developed with cells
arranged in complex three dimensional array suspended in
extracellular fluids, like any other biological object, the fruits
also produce a complex bioelectrical impedance [6-9] which is
not only a function of the applied signal frequency but also is
a function of tissue composition, tissue anatomy and tissue
health. With the change in tissue composition, tissue structure
and tissue health, the electrical impedance of fruits changes.
Moreover as the electrical impedance is a function of applied
signal frequency, the variation in bioimpedance profile due to
the changes in tissue properties also changes in different
frequency ranges. Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS)
[10-18], which measures the variations of electrical impedance
over a certain frequency range, is being found suitable for
investigating biological tissue noninvasively. EIS measures
electrical impedance of an object under test by injecting a
constant amplitude current signal at different frequencies and
the developed potentials using an electrode array and an EIS
instrumentation (Fig.2). EIS has been widely used to
characterize the biological tissue in terms of its electrical
impedance measured from the boundary voltage current data.

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In this direction, banana’s bio-impedance (Z) are measured
over frequencies at different ripening states and the ripening
states are correlated with their corresponding impedances
which can provide the associated nutrients level. The fruits
bio-impedance (Z) and phase angle (θ) are measured and
studied over a wide range of frequencies to study the
frequency dependent behavior of the fruit ripening.
Fig.1: Banana anatomy
1.MATERIALS & METHOD
A. Bioimpedance of Fruits
The plant cells contains intracellular fluids (ICF), cell
membranes and cell wall suspended in an extracellular fluids
(ECF) show a different behavior to an alternating electrical
signal. Under an alternating electrical excitation, the fruits
produce complex bioelectrical impedances are the functions of
tissue composition as well as the frequency of the applied
signal. Therefore the frequency response of the bioelectrical
impedance of the fruit tissues depends on their biological
status such as ripening and varies on different ripening states
and nutrients levels. Hence, analyzing the complex
bioelectrical impedance of fruits, one can estimate ripening
physiology and associated nutrient levels. Like any other
biological tissues, the electrical impedance of a fruit consists
of the resistive and capacitive components which are function
of signal frequency and depends on the tissue compositions
978-1-4799-4445-3/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE
and tissue physiology. Therefore the bioimpedance of the fruit
(Z) will be found as a frequency dependent complex function
which can be represented as:
Z (ω ) = Re(ω ) − j Im(Z (ω )) = R(ω ) − jX (ω ) (1)
Where Re(Z(ω)) = R and Im(Z(ω)) = X represents the
magnitude of the real part of complex Z and the magnitude of
the imaginary part of complex Z respectively.
Fig.2: Electrical Impedance studies of an object using impedance analyzer
In EIS procedure of fruits, the impedance (Z) and its phase
angle (θ) are found as the functions of fruit compositions and
fruit properties at a particular frequency point. Again, the
impedance of a particular tissue composition varies with
signal frequencies and hence the tissue impedance is found as
the function of frequency as well.
To analyze the EIS data obtained from the banana ripening
studies, the real part of Z (R) and imaginary part of Z (X) at
each frequency points (ωi: i = 1, 2, 3, …, n) are calculated and
plotted over frequency to obtain the Nyquist Plot or Cole-
Cole plot [ 17-24 ] or R-X spectrum.
B. Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy of Banana
Good quality mature green bananas, free from bruises, are
purchased from local market and are kept at room
temperature. The experiments for measurement of impedance
during banana ripening are carried out for six days, the time
needed for completing the ripening of banana fruit.
Electrical Impedance and phase angles are measured by
impedance Analyzer (Agilent 4294A) by applying a small
amount of sinusoidal current from 50 Hz and 1 MHz through
an array of Ag/AgCl electrodes attached to the banana surface
and the surface (Fig.3).
 parallelly with the impedance studies to estimate the tissue
composition changes during the ripening and the results to be
correlated with the impedance variation.

Fig.3: Electrical Impedance studies of banana ripening using the impedance

analyzer Agilent 4294A.

Magnitude and phase angle of impedance during banana

ripening were measured within a frequency range of 50Hz to
1MHz under an alternating excitation. Real and imaginary
parts of Z are calculated from the measured impedance and
phase angle using the following equations:
R = Z C o sθ
X = Z S in θ
The relationship between the R and X in the complex
impedance plane is known as Nyquist plot, sometimes referred
as the Cole-Cole plot in some literatures, which describes the
electrical properties of banana during ripening.
3. RESULTS AND DSCUSSION
(2)
(3) Fig. 5: Theta-f curves of banana ripening over different days
The phase angle variation (Fig. 5) is found more complex
and need more studies to analyze the physiological changes
related to the phase variations. The real part of the Z increases
with ripening and decreases with frequency (Fig. 6),
Imaginary part increases with ripening and it increase at low
frequencies but decreases in high frequency regions (Fig. 7).

EIS studies conducted on banana show that the banana

impedance, phase angle, real and imaginary part of the banana
varies with the frequency as well as with the ripening state. It
is observed that the banana impedance increases during
ripening (Fig. 4).

Fig. 6: R-f curves of banana ripening over different days

Nyquist plots (Fig. 8) obtained for banana ripening show a

Fig. 4: Z-f curves of banana ripening over different days
The probable reason may be the acidic parts and iron parts
in the banana tissue reduces and sugar content increases. The
biological and biochemical studies need to be conducted
clear shift of both the real impedance data, and imaginary
impedance data, and which can be analyzed by impedance
curve fitting technique to obtain the equivalent circuit
parameters of the banana. Equivalent electrical circuit analysis
of banana ripening at different storage conditions will reveal a
lot of information about the physiological changes in the
banana during its ripening.

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Fig. 7: X-f curves of banana ripening over different days
Fig. 8: R-X curves[Nyquist plots] of banana ripening over different days
I. CONCLUSION
In this study, banana ripening has been studied non-
invasively using EIS method and the variations electrical
impedance of banana samples are analyzed. The results
obtained from EIS studies, showed that the impedance, phase
angle, real and imaginary part of the impedance all variee with
different state of banana ripening. The Nyquist plots obtained
for banana showed a clear shift of impedance data, both for
real and imaginary parts. The composition change of the
banana tissue may be correlated with the corresponding
electrical impedance changes by conducting biological and
biochemical analysis .The equivalent electrical circuit analysis
will provide more information about banana ripening.
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