Each year, the University of Concepción, awards the ‘Science with Impact Award’. This year it went to the academic from the Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, dr. Christian Correa Farías, for the licensing of a device to measure firmness and internal structure of blueberries and other berries .
On this occasion, the mention in Technology Transfer went to Dr. Correa, for his contribution to the development of technology to measure firmness and internal structure of berries and his licensing to the start-up Trion SpA.
The researcher, who directs the Field Robotics Laboratory, of FIAUdeC, explained that a difficulty present in the agricultural world is determining the effects of frost, blows or other events. “This damage cannot be detected with the naked eye (…) We took these requirements, which were repeated every time we had a visit with companies, and we started with some tests during two seasons, which allowed us to have a more robust prototype, which we postulated at the University Patenting Contest.”
In 2016, a patent was requested for the new technology, which was granted in 2018. And on June 4 of last year, the license agreement was signed between the University of Concepción and Trion Soluciones de Ingeniería SpA, in charge of the validation. and commercialization of the new technology.
As explained on blueberriesconsulting.com¸ the device uses "load cells", which measure how much pressure is being applied to the fruit for a certain degree of compression.
