The IBPGR has supported a cooperative regional programme in Southeast Asia since 1977. This programme is guided by a Committee with representatives from Indonesia, Malasya, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and Thailand. Dr. Setijati Sastrapradja of Indonesia, founding Chairwoman of this Regional Committee, resigned in 1979 and Dr. Narong Chomchalow of Thailand, a present member of the IBPGR, took over as Chairman.

This research work plays an important role in transforming current conventional methodology in fruit quality definition and evaluation into scientific and technological objectives and implementation. Conventional definition in evaluating fruit quality is based on its physical attributes such as colour, size, shape and percentage of physical defects. While the conventional practice is dominating fruit industry, the efforts to transform this conventional definition towards a more valuable and scientific interpretation has been put forth by various research groups worldwide. For every presented variable, evaluating or quantifying methodologies will be introduced and promoted by scientific societies. Similarly to fruit quality evaluation, several methodologies have been introduced, based on its physical or intrinsic definition. Despite many efforts that have been carried out in this research area, gaps still exist for the new research to take place especially in the area related to development of low cost measuring system, miniature and mobile system, online monitoring system with rapid time of measurement and high accuracy and precision measurement algorithm. Hence, this book is written particularly to explore the ability of visible and near infrared spectroscopy in quantitatively determining fruit intrinsic qualities with in-depth case studies on two prominent tropical fruits, Sala mango and B10 carambola.