A novel system for measuring damaging impacts on table olives

The consumer today demands high quality products; fruit with defects or in poor condition generate dissatisfaction and a consequent reduction in consumption. In recent years, interesting systems have been used (i. e. "artificial fruit") in order to identify the cause of damage during mechanical harvesting and/or post-harvest operations. In this paper, the authors present a new system designed to measure the impacts received by table olives in the processing stages from harvesting to packaging. The device is an instrumented sphere designed and implemented by the Agricultural Mechanics Section of the Department of Agricultural and Forest Sciences, University of Palermo, Italy. It contains a triaxial Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) sensor capable of acquiring acceleration from a few mg to 400 g (where g is the gravitational acceleration). It has a microcontroller with software developed for the specific application, a 16 bit A / D converter that allows a resolution of a few mg, a mini-USB port for connection to a master, which is connected to the PC via a common USB port. The master communicates with the sphere to download the data and to adjust parameters such as the data acquisition frequency, which can reach up to 1 kHz (50 Hz, 100 Hz, 400 Hz and 1 kHz). Preliminary tests performed on the functionality of the acquisition system show that the information obtained by the instrumented sphere are useful for identifying the stresses the fruits are subjected to during harvesting and post-harvest

Honey Production with Remote Smart Monitoring System

The innovative technologies of precision agriculture can be applied to beekeeping, a very important sector both from an environmental and production point of view. Bees are responsible, through pollination, for the reproduction of numerous plants guaranteeing biodiversity and providing a final product, honey, highly energetic and with high health properties. Today, sensors applied to the hives can be used to obtain information on the colony phenology in the field, disturbing them as little as possible, allowing the construction of forecast models to control their health state and production increase. The Department of Agricultural, Food and Forest Sciences of the University of Palermo developed a WNS-type system for continuously monitoring and controlling the main environmental factors, both inside and outside the hive, in order to evaluate their influence on daily honey production. The novel system allows to identify any critical points in honey production recording environmental, sound and production data and real time transmitting them to the operators, accessing a specifically created web interface. The results of the study represent the basis for a precision hive management model that can be applied in different environmental conditions to optimize honey production

Study on the tunnel pasteurizer on table olives processing

The application of heat treatment is particularly important in maintaining the organoleptic characteristics of fermented agro-food products, which potential consumers perceive as reflecting the quality of these foodstuffs. However, heat treatments can be cause of deterioration of many quality parameters of agro-food products, including texture, intended as the consistency of the pulp. In this study 'Nocellara del Belice' table olives produced in 2010 and packaged in glass jars were subjected to pasteurization at industrial scale using a tunnel pasteurizer with a core temperature of 75°C for 8 min. The aim of the study was to mechanically evaluate the pulp texture evolution that contributes to the quality of the product up to 36 months after packaging. The experimental tests were performed 6, 12, 18, 24 and 36 months after packaging. At each sampling time the consistency of the pulp through compression tests was evaluated. A panel test was also carried out to perform sensory evaluation of table olives. Results reported herein showed that table olives maintained the requirements regarding physical-mechanical properties, but there is a decrease of some qualitative aspects determining the consumers' taste, among these, fruit firmness

Compression tests of cv. Nocellara del Belice table olives for texture evaluation during storage

The influence of pasteurization temperature and time of treatment on the flesh firmness and the evolution of microbial communities was studied for table olives Cv. Nocellara del Belice, packed in glass jars and processed with a tunnel pasteurizer. Pasteurization at industrial scale was carried out within a tunnel pasteurizer applying the treatment at 75 °C for 8 min in the thermal center of the jars. Besides flesh firmness and microbial evolutions, pH, total ti-tratable acidity (TTA) and colour were evaluated for the table olives during storage at 6, 12 and 15 months from packing. Table olives showed a high stability and an acceptable flesh firmness for the entire period under observation. Specifically, olive pulp texture decreased during the storage period, but the softening was most evident in the deeper layers of the pulp. The results indicated that the storage period should not exceed 6 months; although the hygiene is preserved, after this period the firmness might compromise the acceptability by consumer

A new wireless device for real-time mechanical impact evaluation in a citrus packing line

Postharvest operations of fresh fruits in packing lines are potential cause of bruising and damage with remarkable consequences for fruit quality and marketability. Different types of impact recording devices (the so-called electronic fruits or pseudo fruits) have been developed in the last thirty years with the aim of measuring the magnitude of the impacts experienced by fruits during postharvest operations. The aim of this study was to develop and test a novel wireless instrumented sphere in order to study the critical points in a citrus packing line, real-time measuring the impacts suffered by fruits during processing. The non-commercial device was based on a MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical System) sensor node with sensing range from ±1 g to ± 400 g (g = 9.8 m s-2), a Ferroelectric RAM (FRAM) memory, a Radio Frequency (RF) transmitter, a microcontroller, a 75 mAh lithium battery. The sensor node was positioned inside a plastic ellipsoidic case with a total weight of 100 g in order to represent the cv. Tardivo di Ciaculli mandarin. A FR receiver allowed the real-time transmission of the measured data. The tests were performed in the “Consorzio del Mandarino Tardivo di Ciaculli” packing line (Palermo, Italy). Total acceleration values, representing the stresses suffered by the fruit inside the packing line, were studied using a variance component model. The results showed that in most of the measurements, total acceleration remained below 20 g but between the brushing and the waxing machine, considerably higher values were obtained, up to 80 g. In particular, waxing was identified as the most critical operation based on the impact magnitude transmitted to the fruit. Our system proved to be effective for performing the online assessment of the accelerations experienced by the fruits, immediately visualizing them with the opportunity of promptly deciding where to intervene to guarantee fruits’ quality in postharvest operations

Quality evaluation of "Tardivo di Ciaculli" mandarins in post-harvest processing on an industrial scale using a portable Vis/NIR device

Vis/NIR technology is widely used today to quickly and non-destructively evaluate fruit and vegetable qualities, and many applications have been found since the 1990s. However, no industrial-scale applications can further consolidate the use of non-destructive techniques in post-harvest processing. This study aims to test the possibility of applying vis/NIR technology in a modern citrus-processing plant to assess the damage that the fruits eventually suffer when they are processed on an industrial scale and the evolution of their key quality parameters in a period of 10 days after harvest. The spectral acquisitions were performed using a portable vis/NIR device, which operated in the wavelength range of 600 to 1000 nm. The firmness, pH, and soluble solids content (SSC) were studied for "Tardivo di Ciaculli" mandarin on a total of 1800 fruits. The results show that the vis/NIR device can predict 96% of the total variability of the observed values for fruit firmness; however, the insignificance of the coefficients corresponding to the different sampling points of the processing plant, in the early stages of time, denotes the poor ability of the device to properly detect firmness in the time points closer to the fruit processing. The vis/NIR device explains 93% of the variability of the observed pH and SSC values

Influence of pasteurization temperature on flesh firmness of table olives cv. Nocellara del Belice

The application of heat treatment is especially important in maintaining the organoleptic characteristics of fermented agro-food products, which potential consumers perceive as reflecting the quality of these foodstuffs. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of pasteurization time and temperature on the flesh firmness of table olives cv. Nocellara del Belice, packaged in glass jars, and to study their effect on the microbial community of table olives. Four different treatments were applied, one for each of the pasteurization temperatures adopted: 65 °C, 75 °C, 85 °C and 95 °C. A control test was also carried out (test Tc, not pasteurized). Each test was repeated with treatments lasting 4, 8 and 12 minutes. In order to determine the mechanical properties of the olives, all of the batches were subsequently subjected to a laboratory compression test using a dynamometer (Imada DPS 5R - USA) connected to a stand and a PC for data download. The compression force was recorded continuously along the entire pulp sample. Microbiological analyses were performed on olives and brines immediately after the heat treatment (t0) and after 2 months (t1). The results obtained here show that it is appropriate to employ pasteurization temperatures at least equal to 75 °C for a time not lower than 8 minutes from the microbiological point of view. Regarding the olive fruits mechanical properties, it is advisable to use a pasteurization temperature of 75 °C even for a time of 4 minutes in order to maintain a good flesh firmness thus satisfying the consumers' taste