An innovative fruit ripeness checker, to offer non-destructive testing in order to ensure resource efficient fruit processing - Ripesense

Projektinformationen

Ripesense

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 663327

DOI

10.3030/663327

Projekt abgeschlossen

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 18 März 2015

Startdatum 1 April 2015

Enddatum 30 September 2015

Finanziert unter

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy

Gesamtkosten

€ 71 429,00

EU-Beitrag

€ 50 000,00

Koordiniert durch

NORTH COURT FRUIT FARM
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Ripesense (An innovative fruit ripeness checker, to offer non-destructive testing in order to ensure resource efficient fruit processing - Ripesense)

Berichtszeitraum: 2015-04-01 bis 2015-09-30

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

‘Fresh’ fruits for the consumer market can only be sold as such if they are shown to be a certain standard of ‘ripeness’, as judged by the sugar content and firmness. There is great commercial pressure on producers to provide produce which is of the appropriate standard. Apples which do not meet this standard can be sold to the wholesale market or juiced with losses to market value of 50% and 95% respectively, but apples & citrus fruits which are destructively tested are sold as animal feed, composted or sent to landfill.
As a result, fruits are tested many times during the production cycle, both in harvesting and distribution. Unfortunately, the most widely used tests for both are destructive tests. This leads to the destruction of between 6 – 8% of harvested apples and approximately 5% of citrus fruits for testing purposes. Worldwide, this would amount to 4.6 – 6.1 million tonnes of apples and 6.6 million tonnes of citrus fruit annually. At average European prices, this represents a combined economic loss of €6.3 – 7.2 billion every year.
Ripesense is an innovative solution to this problem. The objective of our project is to develop and produce an automated system capable of non-destructively testing both the firmness and sugar content of fruits, initially apples and citrus fruits.
The main benefits of these performance objectives are to provide a system that can:
• Replace destructive test methods with non-destructive ‘Ripesense’, reducing waste fruit going to landfill by 50%
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced by waste fruit sent to landfill
• Reduce customer complaints 30% by using Ripesense frequently to minimise risk of overripe fruit reaching consumer
• Reduce time & labour testing fruits for ripeness, enabling a 50% reduction in QC staff or more advantageous deployment
• Allow fruits to be optimally distributed to retailers with different quality criteria, further increasing yield efficiency by ~10%

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

The deliverable from the phase 1 project is a feasibility stuy and business planfor the Ripesense technolgy. This has been completed as planned.

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

The expected final result of the phase 1 project is the feasibility report which is complete and attached. There are no other impacts of the Phase 1 project to report.

Participant EASME page