Assessing the freshness of fruit can be a bit of a guessing game, and the lack of an easy and accurate way of doing it is one of the leading causes of food waste. Israeli computer scientist Avi Schwartzer, looking to solve the problem came up with the idea for the AclaroMetersays.
“Know Your Fruit” is the motto of AclarTech, the company he founded in December 2016 with partner Ruby Boyarski in the Rehovot suburb of Ness Ziona.
While such a meter would be welcomed by home gardeners like him, Schwartzer realized that the real market is farmers, wholesalers and retailers. And in fact, when he started developing the AclaroMeter prototype, people in those sectors responded enthusiastically.
With an investment from Boaz Chalamish (former senior vice president of Mercury Interactive, acquired by H-P in 2006), the partners put together a product that combines two unique made-in-Israel tools: AclarTech’s proprietary algorithm and Consumer Physics’ SCiO handheld molecular sensor.
SCiO reveals internal attributes of the fruit, such as sweetness (BRIX) and dry weight. AclaroMeter crunches that data, along with smartphone camera images of external attributes such as color and size, to display a quality and ripeness “grade” for the fruit (or cluster of fruits) instantaneously.
“Our vision is to improve the efficiency and quality of fresh agricultural produce along the food chain, from the farmer in the field to the table of the consumer,” says Schwartzer. “Our goal is to be the standard for fruit quality and ripeness.”