New research is looking at warm spots in the strawberry supply chain.
When fruit gets warm, strawberries lose some of their sugars, vitamins and antioxidants and can more easily bruise and decay, Jeff Brecht, a University of Florida horticultural sciences professor and extension specialist, said in a news release.
Brecht and Ismail Uysal, a University of South Florida associate professor of electrical engineering, worked together on a recently published study that found places in the food chain where strawberries were getting warmer than the optimal 34 degrees, according to the release.
In the study, researchers inserted electronic thermometers to track the temperatures in strawberry pallets from harvest to grocery store. The thermometers, according to the report, recorded the temperatures in the pallets and transmitted them through cell phone signals.
The release said two of the shipments went from Plant City to other cities in Florida and Georgia. The other four shipments originated in Salinas, California – the most productive agricultural region in California -- to Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina and North Carolina.
The researchers found the locations in the supply chain where temperatures were too warm, and those locations varied, according to the report. Sometimes the warm spots were during transport, sometimes at warehouses; sometimes during offloading and storage and sometimes on display at grocery stores, according to the release.
Using data they had found in the shipping tests, the scientists stored strawberries at Brecht’s lab at UF in Gainesville. There, researchers recreated shipping scenarios and monitored the fruit quality. Through this process, the researchers documented the negative effects on strawberries when the cold chain is broken, according to the release.
The data from the study, the release said, tell Brecht and Uysal points where they can educate farmers, transportation companies, and groceries about what they can do to keep temperatures down in the supply chain.
Moving forward, the release said the scientists are working on developing machine-learning models that can reliably predict the future marketability of strawberries from the temperature conditions they were exposed to in the cold chain -- from harvest all the way to the store.
