The paper describes a sophisticated and low cost Automated Visual Inspection System (AVIS) for quality control of preserved orange segments, widely applicable to production processes of preserved fruits and vegetables. Main constraints concerning these kind of inspection applications are addressed: the need of on-line operation together with an strong requirement of economic profitability. The strong commitment of above circumstances have forced the development of a flexible and low cost AVIS architecture. An special effort has been put in the design of the defect detection algorithms to reach two main objectives: accurate feature extraction and on-line capabilities, both considering robustness and low processing time. An on-line implementation to inspect up to ten orange segments by second is reported.