AgroFresh Solutions has expanded its FreshCloud digital ecosystem through partnerships with Aerobotics, which specializes in orchard and packhouse analytics, and Neolithics, which specializes in in AI-powered quality inspection.
“What we’re doing at AgroFresh is trying to build more of a true end-to-end supply chain focus,” Bradford Warner, head of digital solutions for AgroFresh, told The Packer.
Warner says AgroFresh has intentionally sought out technology solutions to ease friction and lower waste within the fresh produce industry.
“These two solutions were one that we said, there’s a friction point preharvest and that what we’re doing typically, whether it’s citrus, grapes, apples, is we’re sending pretty well-trained agronomists out into fields with calipers and things like that,” he says. “We should be at a point now where we can handle this through imagery.”
And Warner says what was appealing about Aerobotics is users just needed an iPhone Pro or a smartphone with lidar capabilities.
Through this partnership with Aerobotics, AgroFresh integrates Aerobotics’ TrueFruit modules into FreshCloud to enable growers to analyze smartphone imagery. AgroFresh says growers using Aerobotics’ TrueFruit boost packouts by an average of 1% to 5%.
AgroFresh says Aerobotics enables growers to:
- Measure fruit size, color and quality accurately and objectively
- Improve harvest planning with accurate size forecasting, blemish detection and color grading models
- Monitor quality with standardized measurements, from the orchard to the packhouse
- View yield data in one place for informed decisions
“There’s still other data that’s kind of unknown preharvest,” Warner says, “But this is where we’re really focused in today. So, it’s size and color that gets you to a yield correlation and then looking towards obvious blemishes.”
Warner says what was appealing about Neolithics is the ability to analyze berries, grapes or even avocados. He says through traditional quality analysis in packinghouses, there might be significant variance in the results or even the results might be misleading about the quality of the produce coming from that block.
“The human error factor gets magnified the more times you do those tests,” he says. “Neolithic stood out to us as having a real strong base to say there was a good hardware format but kind of like a kiosk could run these at a better volume so that the sample size goes up.”
Neolithics Light devices use AI and optical sensors to deliver fast, accurate and non-destructive quality analysis in real time. AgroFresh says Neolithics’ integration into FreshCloud offers packers technology that delivers quality assurance to match the speed and scale of the modern packhouse with above 90% accuracy.
AgroFresh says Neolithics offers:
- High-throughput inspection, from 1 kilogram per minute for berries to over 6 tons per hour for avocados, scanning every piece for internal and external quality.
- Measurement of key parameters such as Brix, acidity and dry matter, while detecting hidden internal and surface defects.
And then Warner says all the data gathered is compiled into FreshCloud to help provide both a grower report on quality and help track quality.
Warner says the additions of Neolithics and Aerobotics will help packers and distributors give accurate grading and help reduce waste. Integrating some of AgroFresh’s other solutions would help suppliers stand out, he adds.
“Suppliers could start to differentiate themselves on quality and not see rejections, not see the problems that are just part of our industry today,” Warner says.
AgroFresh seeks to build an entire traceability suite from preharvest to transit, he adds.
“We’ve been trying to build the FreshCloud platform with traceability in mind. Now we’ve already kind of solved for traceability like inside a packer,” Warner says. “But now we’re trying to solve for it from preharvest down through transit.”
