Israeli researchers have developed a device for testing the quality of tomatoes without picking them

Researchers from the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed an innovative method, which should make it possible to check the quality of tomatoes while still on the plant, without the need to pick or damage the fruit. The research, published in the journal Computers and Electronics in Agriculture and resulting in a registered patent in the USA, offers an efficient and economical solution.

The new method, developed by a team of researchers led by Dr. David Hellman, is based on a unique device capable of identifying and analyzing seven key quality indicators of the tomato – weight, firmness, dissolved sugars, acidity, vitamin C, lycopene and the acidity level (pH), without touching In fruit, the unique device is capable of producing high-resolution images of the electromagnetic spectrum in areas that the human eye is unable to see, process and analyze this information with the help of intelligence artificially and provide an assessment of the fruit quality indicators.

The researchers noted that the traditional methods for testing fruit quality cause damage to the fruit and, in addition, are limited to testing after picking only. On the other hand, the new device should enable non-destructive quality monitoring during the growing phase, cheaply and relatively quickly. The innovation in the research is also expressed in a significant reduction of costs, after the researchers succeeded in developing a model capable of predicting all the quality indicators using only five wavelengths, which enables the development of a simple and cheap device for commercial use.

The study, which included 567 fruits from five different varieties and under varied growing conditions, proved the effectiveness of the method widely. The results show a particularly high accuracy in measuring the weight and firmness of the fruit, with a predictive ability of 95% and 89% respectively.