Logo courtesy of Wageningen University & Research

With a primary focus on food safety and security, Plant Sciences Group managing director Ernst van den Ende and members of the Wageningen team discussed various applications of its mission to focus on the domain of a “healthy food and living environment.” To fulfill this, research is based on the pillars of science, education and value creation, which are, he said, “combined to solve the complex issues in society.” For example: What is needed to bring a GMO to society? How do consumers accept new technologies? And, overarching all: How can we innovate more (e.g., per square meter) with less (e.g., energy), and better (e.g., safer, healthier)? “All our research programs are linked to this mantra,” van den Ende said.

He then illustrated its application to greenhouses, explaining that a high-tech tomato greenhouse can produce 20 times more than that which can be produced in the field — with four times less water. Additionally, it can use biological pest control in the closed system, resulting in less residue. All of this results in more sustainable production. “People aren’t aware that technology and sustainability are linked because they link sustainability to nature,” he said. “We need to carry that message to them.”

This is particularly important because of the challenges facing agriculture. Not only are there current global issues, such as agriculture inequality and availability of healthy food, but this will be exacerbated with the world population expected to increase to 10.5 billion people by 2100. With the impacts of climate change and our current energy and water use are added to this, said WUR Plant Pathology Scientist Geert Kessel, it is critical that agriculture’s ecological impact be reduced.

A renewed vision

The 2016 rebranding of Wageningen University and the research institutes with which it merged in the late ’90s into Wageningen University & Research has strengthened the university’s research, by furthering the blending of education, fundamental research and practical application in collaboration with the business community and social organizations.

As explained by van den Ende, it is a partnership of the public and private sector. It begins with science-driven, pre-competitive work to provide general knowledge for the industry. As the research continues and moves from theory to discovery to application, the process moves further into the private sector with privately funded, proprietary applications developed from the general research.

The purpose and goal is to provide “science with impact,” he said, explaining that to really have an impact, you have to focus on and listen to the industry. “It’s really a balancing between industry and government to find the common interests and come up with sustainable solutions,” he said.

Van den Ende gave seed breeding as an example:

• Through public funding, research has focused on molecular DNA.
• Through 10 percent private funding, the research centered in on tomatoes and potatoes.
• With more private funding and direction, research was directed to the genomics of specific tomatoes.

As such, he said, “The more private funding, the more the intellectual property belongs to industry.”

Up for debate

There is, however, a lot of debate about the value of public/private partnerships, said WUR press officer Erik Toussaint. “But that’s the beauty of the university; we welcome these debates. There isn’t one right approach; you need to use whichever is best.”

“For us, it’s really important to connect to society and do a lot of public debates,” van den Ende agreed. “I would like to have debates on facts, but very often it’s a debate on emotion.”

Just as controversial is the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Kessel’s work is currently focused on developing resistance management in potatoes. Blight, as well as various bacteria, viruses and pests, all provide challenges to production. Therefore, research is focused on how to increase durability in relation to pests and diseases. The project aimed at stimulating research on genetic modification and public debate on innovative genetic techniques. As explained in the study report, “It was decided to clone and transfer late blight resistance (R) genes of crossable wild potato species (cisgenes) by Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation without non-potato genes.”

As such, Kessel said, GMO is a tool for which one should determine benefit and risk by looking at the product in which it is used, not at the technology itself. Each application should be assessed from all aspects. “Here, we can afford not to use it,” he said. “But in poorer countries, they would really benefit from a technology like this.” For example, the study shows that if late blight were to be nearly eradicated, global potato production would increase by close to 80 million tons annually — contributing considerably to the needed additional global future food supply.

A lot of today’s plants are very susceptible to environmental conditions, and we need to study these and consider as many options as possible to increase production, said WUR scientist Gerard van der Linden. Why is this plant doing better than that one? Is there a genetic reason? Can we adapt that?

“We need to try to find the traits that breeders can use,” he said. For example, protein and fiber-rich quinoa is very tolerant to drought and salinity; it can grow in salt water and under normal conditions. As such, it has become a key focus of research for van der Linden. “This is a crop you can grow where no other crop can and produce a high yield,” he said. “So we are studying it to find out why. Maybe we can introduce that into other crops.”

Lisa is the editor of sister publication Quality Assurance & Food Safety (QA) magazine. llupo@gie.net

Integrated technology is improving for the produce market. Picture produce moving along a conveyor belt, then being picked up by delicate and adaptive robotic handles and cut with a 50,000-PSI waterjet. Together, these specialized parts constitute Heinzen Manufacturing International’s new Automated Produce Cutting System.

This system processes multiple types of produce, says Rudi Groppe, Heinzen president and CEO. “Anywhere that you’re picking and pulling and moving, this technology could [be applied],” he says.

How it works

Heinzen is the integrator of the technology, says Heinzen sales engineer Willi Ortner. The company partnered with Yaskawa Motoman, which developed the wash-down duty robot; Soft Robotics, which developed the gripper technology and end-of-arm-tooling; and KMT Waterjet Systems, which developed the waterjet.

The system’s individual components are highly specialized. In addition to its 50,000-PSI waterjet that cuts the produce, its soft robotic handles are adaptive enough to securely grab and hold fruits and vegetables and conform to the unique shapes of individual pieces.

The Automated Produce Cutting System replaces two to three employees and has a target return on investment of a year to 18 months, Ortner says. It is typically an investment for processors, but growers could use it themselves as an added step.

Recent improvements in robotics

In recent years, robotics manufacturers developing tech for produce operations have taken several steps to improve their technologies. One of the first issues the produce industry had to face was manufacturing of the soft robotics gripper, Groppe says. “You can fine-tune the design of it and the force of it, so you can actually pick up tomatoes, strawberries [and] apple wedges without any mechanical damage,” he says. “That was the first step in [replacing] some of the steps that a human does.”

Another major development was in camera technology, Groppe says. With nearly every robotic manufacturer recognizing and processing images, and more of them using a process called blob detection, an increasing number of them can integrate.

Then comes conveyance. Current systems can now run mini sweet peppers along a conveyor belt, pick them up and cut the buds off them, Groppe says. “That’s an operation now that with the gripping technology, the camera technology and conveyance, you can actually automate it, where five years ago, that was pretty much always going to be 40 people in front of a conveyor belt, picking up each product, hand-orienting and placing it,” he says.

Robotics manufacturers are consistently trying to determine how to speed up multiple steps that humans currently perform, Groppe says. In the case of strawberries, workers inspect the quality of fruit, cut them and put them on another conveyor for sorting.

What does this mean for growers and processors? “Part of the robotic solution is not replacing labor 100 percent,” Groppe says. “It’s just extending what one worker can do by four, five, six times the productivity rate of that individual.”

Packhouses stick produce with labels that contain information such as barcodes, price look-up (PLU) numbers, brand and country of origin. With some packhouses labeling up to a billion fruits and vegetables a year, that’s a lot of labeling.

Founded in 1982, Sinclair Systems International focuses on automating the produce labeling process to improve efficiencies, says product manager Barry Lawson. The company’s systems label apples, citrus, kiwis, potatoes and avocadoes, as well as greenhouse-grown crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. “If you go into a market today, it’s probably safe to say that 75 percent of the fruit in there has been labeled with Sinclair equipment,” Lawson says.

For years, Sinclair has pre-printed labels, working with an in-house graphic artist to create labels that are specific shapes and sizes, and match clients’ branding goals, Lawson says. But as packhouses wanted to increase productivity and decrease labor costs, they looked to more fully automated labeling technology.

Retailers request that 90 to 95 percent of their produce is labeled so they don’t lose revenue. If a piece of fruit doesn’t have a label on it, Lawson says a cashier could ring it up for a lower price than what it is worth. If a fruit is worth 50 cents and the cashier rings it up for 25 cents, that’s 25 cents gone. “The supermarket lost that revenue, the grower lost that revenue and the packhouse is going to lose that revenue as well,” he says.

Various systems from Sinclair, including direct thermal technology, online labeling and pattern labeling, have been replacing costly and imperfect labor in packhouses, Lawson says.

Direct thermal labeling

When running labels through Sinclair’s direct thermal technology machines, packers install bitmaps (images consisting of small dots) into the machine’s computer system. “You have fixed print on the label that we’ve made, so you’re going to have the brand name at the top and maybe something at the bottom, but at the middle, you want a different origin, PLU or [variable],” Lawson says.

When it comes time to label another type of produce, the operator picks out a new bitmap, but doesn’t have to change the cassette of labels, Lawson says.

Online labeling

In Sinclair’s online labeling systems, produce runs through a sizer to be measured for size, texture and bruising. The sizer recognizes the produce and sends a signal to the machine.

An example of an online labeling system is Sinclair’s six-head RM6 system, Lawson says. “You have lanes running across that can label all the fruit simultaneously,” he says. “Then we have a V6, which is a smaller, single-lane system that gives you some flexibility for smaller pack houses. If you want to unhook it and move it somewhere else, you have that luxury.”

Pattern labeling

Pattern labeling is popular in Europe, where produce is stacked on trays on top of each other at retail, Lawson says. In pattern labeling, trays that hold a certain amount of produce feed through a machine. Because the produce stays firm in the tray after labeling, the label is always visible on each individual crop.

Up to 500 patterns can be programmed into Sinclair’s new Compact Pattern Labeller (CPL) system, which the company introduced in 2017, Lawson says. “You pick the pattern that you want to run, and then you do not have to crank the cassettes, or the heads, to go up and down, according to the size of fruit,” he says. “It’s already loaded according to the pattern that you have.”

With Sinclair’s multiple systems, the company aims for integration and smart technology, allowing packers to walk around with tablets and know their labeling percentage, and be aware of when they will run out of cassettes. “They want early warning systems, so to speak, so they want diagnostics,” Lawson says.

Mexican company Sistemas Agro App has developed and introduced SMATTCOM, an app that aims to allow produce professionals to more easily navigate the supply chain.

The app’s features include a price monitor; messaging within commercial networks; searches based on market, country and product characteristics; and notifications of matching traders. Products displayed in the app are sorted by variety, as well as quality, size and packaging, says Walter Arriaga, SMATTCOM technological advisor.

“Currently the usage of SMATTCOM is free and unlimited for everyone, so members can learn which set of features matches the best with their necessities and their working style,” Arriaga says. “Over time, we will gradually introduce ‘functional bundles’ with differentiated costs, including a free basic service for those who really don’t need that many features.”

Believing that the produce industry could best achieve its full potential through technological innovation, Sistemas Agro App’s CEO and founder, Sergio Alejandro Roldán Vázquez, developed SMATTCOM as the company’s first product. Sistemas Agro App began developing SMATTCOM in 2016. It came out with a functional version of the app around the end of July 2017, Arriaga says, but the product had its “Big Bang” at the Produce Marketing Association’s Fresh Summit event in New Orleans in October 2017.

Arriaga says SMATTCOM offers produce professionals three primary advantages: to expand their networks, gather information about market prices in real time and become aware of business opportunities. The app functions as a social network, so final transactions and agreements do not take place within it.

“Currently, our catalogs contain markets and products from U.S., Mexico and several Central and South American countries,” Arriaga says. “But to add a new country or region, all we need is a few interested users and a list of relevant markets and products to put things in motion.”

The user interface is navigable to both speakers of English and Spanish, and the company intends to add new languages in the future, Arriaga says. Prices are in the currency of the market where producers place their offers. When asked if SMATTCOM replaces the roles of brokers, Arriaga says, “SMATTCOM strengthens connections between producers, intermediaries, distributors and end customers. The effect is that all of them, without exception, potentialize their opportunities. No producer has an infrastructure large enough to get his/her product all the way to the end customers.”

“We must not forget that the free fluctuation of prices is the correct formula for this type of product,” Arriaga says. “If all the participants assume their role, we have an ideal scenario to establish the correct price. In this model all participants add up, regardless of their size. The difference is the level of information available for everyone to make their decisions.”

In the future, Sistemas Agro App plans to support producers, distributors and wholesale customers in a more structured way, Arriaga says. Individual tools and complete suites could help producers monitor planning and production, distributors move product in and out of diverse markets and wholesale customers manage a range of offers and suppliers.