2.1. Heating experiment
Fresh pickling cucumbers were obtained from local
growers or pickle companies. Only hand-washed cucumbers
free of obvious physical damage and disease
were used. Cucumbers with diameters of about 25, 37,
and 45 mm were used for model veri®cation. A digital
vernier calipers (Digimatic, model no. CD-S600CP,
Mitutoyo, Japan) with precision of 0.01 mm was used to
measure the actual dimension of each cucumber.