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nafex - [NAFEX] FW: Hi-Tech Camera "Tastes" Apples to Ensure Quality

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  • From: "Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>
  • To: NAFEX <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] FW: Hi-Tech Camera "Tastes" Apples to Ensure Quality
  • Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 07:35:25 -0700


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From: ARS News Service <NewsService@ars.usda.gov>
Reply-To: ARS News Service <NewsService@ars.usda.gov>
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 09:04:04 -0400
To: ARS News subscriber <lonrom@hevanet.com>
Subject: Hi-Tech Camera "Tastes" Apples to Ensure Quality

STORY LEAD:
Hi-Tech Camera "Tastes" Apples to Ensure Quality

___________________________________________

ARS News Service
Agricultural Research Service, USDA
Don Comis, (301) 504-1625, comis@ars.usda.gov
August 7, 2002
___________________________________________

Wouldn't it be nice to check an apple's taste before buying it, without
chomping down? You surely wouldn't want an inspector pre-tasting the apple
you buy, but how about a robot?

The robotic inspection cameras envisioned by Agricultural Research Service
scientist Renfu Lu would "taste" every single apple by bouncing light off
it to sense sugar content and firmness, the top two things that make an
apple taste great.

Lu has developed mathematical equations that relate sugar content to the
amount of light absorbed by an apple, and firmness to the amount of light
bounced off the apple. Lu is an agricultural engineer at the ARS Sugarbeet
and Bean Research Unit in East Lansing, Mich., the third largest U.S.
apple-producing state.

Washington State produces almost half the nation's apples--and is
partially funding Lu's work--while New York and Michigan together produce
another 20 percent. Lu's research is critical to these and all
apple-producing states.

Apple packinghouses currently rely on digital camera imagery to sort
apples by surface appearance only, flagging those that are visibly
defective or the wrong size or color. The current system can't detect
bruises beneath the skin--or flavor and other internal qualities.

Lu looks deeper by adding lights and spectroscopy to analyze various
wavelengths of reflected light. When the system is fully developed,
specially designed software will allow a computer to sort apples by the
internal quality attributes--firmness, ripeness and taste--required for
various grades.

Lu's digital imagery system can easily be merged with those in
packinghouses and adapted to other fruits such as peaches and pears. He is
currently working with cherries as well as apples.

More information on robotic inspection for taste in apples can be found in
the August 2002 issue of Agricultural Research magazine, online at:

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/aug02/grade0802.htm

ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research
agency.

___________________________________________
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