Researchers of the WUR present the latest methods for improving quality of fruit and vegetables

The shelf life of ready-to-eat avocados is significantly improved when it’s stored at eight degrees Celsius. Perhaps hoped for but now proven incorrect: the flavour of strawberries picked before they are ripe doesn’t improve during storage, in fact, it becomes worse. These are two remarkable results from the four-year project of GreenCHAINge Fruit & Vegetables, focused on encouraging the consumption of fruit and vegetables and making the supply chain more sustainable. Wageningen University & Research (WUR) recently announced part of the results.

Project leader Eelke Westra of the WUR

Measuring quality
Besides practical results the sector can start using right away, the project’s major result is in the development of objective measuring methods. This could help in discussions regarding rejections in times of oversupply. Measuring quality is now often done using colour fans. Project leader Eelke Westra of the WUR: “We developed a camera system that measures and analyses the colour of fruit and vegetables. Instead of manually assessing one product, the machine gives a clear image of a crate filled with product. This doesn’t just result in more efficiency, but also gives an objective, accurate and verifiable image.” It’s not a quality inspector or the buyer assessing the quality of a product, but a camera, which turns the image into digital information.

Post harvest technologist Jan Verschoor, WUR, led a quiz on the results of the research

Predicting quality
Westra is particularly proud of the model that can predict the quality of the products after the harvest. This happens based on variables from the production phase, given factors such as amount of rain and temperatures. “With this model, we quantify and formalise the knowledge now mostly in the brains of experts, and we can utilise more data. With the results, each link in the supply chain can make better decisions based on figures.” For example, it could help a buyer to decide which grower supplies the intended quality during a certain period.

Transport & storage systems
For transport and storage, conditioning systems are used to maintain the product’s quality. Experts from the WUR, among other things, introduced a new floor-covering system for cooled containers. This resulted in 30% fewer temperature differences during the shipment, and therefore less quality loss of perishables. They also developed dynamic packing material capable of maintaining the protective atmosphere when environmental temperatures vary. This increases the shelf life of perishables, even when kept outside of refrigerators.

Daco Sol of GroentenFruit Huis

Business participating
The GreenCHAINge project is a public-private cooperation, and companies that assisted included Frankort&Koning, CNC, BakkerBarendrecht, Vezet, AH, East-West Seed, Banken Champignons, NFO, Agrofresh, Alviro Direct, The Greenery, Vogelaar-Vredehof, Frupaks Vernooij, Veiling Zuid-Limburg, Handelsmaatschappij Jan Oskam, Total Produce, Stems, growers and GroentenFruit Huis. “Improving the quality is a constant point of attention within the supply chain from producer to consumer. Knowledge and techniques developed to this end are much appreciated by our members. They therefore enjoy working together within projects such as GreenCHAINge and Fresh on Demand, in order to actively contribute,” says Daco Sol, responsible for Logistics, Supervision & Supply Chain for GroentenFruit Huis, and who was the host of the seminar.

Caroline van der Horst of CNC

CNC and Frankort&Koning shared their experiences of public-private cooperations. The cooperation between business, growers and researchers isn’t always easy to practically fill, according to Caroline van der Horst of substrate supplier CNC. There’s a lot of distrust in the mushroom sector, and this also became clear during the research. The development of an objective measuring method for the quality of mushrooms could result in more transparency. “Now they’re just looking at yields, and the only inspection is visual. That means growers are very dependent on inspectors or buyers. A lot of product is often returned when the market’s bad,” Caroline says. Con Storm of Frankort&Koning was very positive about the project. “We have to head towards knowing what customers want, rather then what buyers want.”

Con Storm of Frankort&Koning

Preceding the GreenCHAINge seminar, the WUR launched a new public-private cooperation focused on the quality control of fruit and vegetables: Fresh on Demand. This project is mostly focused on food safety, sustainability and packaging.

35 fact sheets
GreenCHAINge consisted of four years of research, and 29 partners participated in the project. The project consists of seven sub-projects (mango, beans and grapes; melon and papaya; soft fruit and strawberry; mushrooms; pear; stone fruit; automatic quality inspection). Research of 6,000 mangoes, 25,000 mushrooms, 1,200 melons, 54,000 strawberries, 10,000 pears and 3,000 avocados in 1,300 days of cold store and using 28 different measuring methods resulted in a wealth of information. As of this moment, 35 fact sheets have been published on the research (link to Dutch website).

Members of GroentenFruit Huis could be present during the seminar, a number of them stayed behind for a chat:

Ruud van Enckevort of AgroFresh, Hans de Wild (WUR) and Miltiadis Gkouzouris of HVA International