Project

Avoid food waste and maintain product quality by sensing product conditions during transport

This project (IoT4AGRI) will demonstrate that monitoring quality loss of perishables during transport by using IoT technologies food loss could be significantly reduced whilst product quality on arrival is maintained.

Lots of fruits and vegetables are being produced in Africa for European consumption and transported to the Netherlands by road, rail or by sea via the port of Rotterdam. Due to a lack of monitoring food waste during transport is over 20%. Besides supply chain planning does not take the product variations after harvesting into account. Apart from using temperature-controlled transport with fixed settings, there is no monitoring of the ripening process during transport.

Research

Can this food waste be prevented and how can we maintain the quality of the products? Can we monitor the ripening status and intervene in the transport chain if needed? And is this possible against acceptable cost? To answer these questions, a consortium of collaborating parties has started the IoT4AGRI project. The research is commissioned by TNO and Wageningen Food & Biobased Research in collaboration with Van Oers United, Environmental Monitoring Systems, Pufresh, Thermoking, Het Internet Huis, Europool Systems and SmartPort.

Opportunities and challenges

Research has indicated that we can intervene and avoid waste and quality loss in three consecutive steps: using sensors to collect data about the ripening process, real-time modelling of quality decay and the application of these predictions within the transport chain. These process steps pose challenges, such as how we will get the right sensor data available in real-time for modelling and how we can intervene in the transport chain. These process steps are integrated into the IoT4AGRI project. More information and links to the reports that have already been delivered can be found in the two pager “Avoid food waste by sensing during transport”.

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