Regio Zuid-Holland | Fresco Sorting Aid

Globally, 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted each year, causing economic losses (€2.1 trillion) and producing a huge environmental footprint (~3.3 billion tons CO2 emissions). About 50% of all fruit and vegetables are wasted throughout the supply chain, in part due to suboptimal methods to determine quality, which require manual cutting of the produce. Fresco Sorting Aid will be the first non-destructive method that provides accurate and reliable quality control of fresh produce, greatly reducing food wastage..Fresco Sorting Aid is the first microwave-based non-destructive quality inspection method to accurately assess and predict the internal quality of fruits and vegetables. The end product, a microwave sensor module, will be easily integrated in any existing sorting line to provide fast and accurate assessments of fruits/vegetables quality while leaving the produce fully intact. Through an integrated smart quality control platform, FreshAID will provide a prediction of shelf-life and other quality parameters..During this project, in a period of 8 months, we aim to:.• Assess the market value, price point and acceptance of the fresco sorting aid (through market research);.• Define technical feasibility of a contactless implementation, through simulations and experiments;.• Define the preferred implementation of a contactless solution (in terms of sensor construction, position in respect to the fruit, environment);.• Define time constraints associated to the solution (through interviews and industrial search);.• Realize a first order prototype for the contactless sensor;.• Investigate possibility of integration in existing sorting lines.