Article Abstracts | March 2008
The complete article appears in the March 2008 issue of Photonics Spectra. If you do not have a copy of this issue,
e-mail us a request. Be sure to include your street address or fax number.
Slicing and Dicing Food and Agricultural Data
Multivariate analysis helps parse calibration data that take into account conditions encountered from the farm to the market.
by William A. Ivancic and K. David Monson, Battelle
Farming has gone high-tech, with optical monitoring taking place from the air and from satellites, on planting and harvesting equipment, and on ground-based sensors. The food and beverage industry uses optical sensing to ensure that raw materials, additives and final products are of consistently high quality. Transporters and receivers of goods also use optical sensing because it is noninvasive, and shipments can be inspected for freshness or purity without being opened.
Apple growers, for example, examine levels of ethylene, fructose, galactose and sucrose because they can be correlated with apple ripeness. Measurements of these sugars can be performed on the trees or after picking by closely aiming a hand-held grating-based spectrometer at the surface of the fruit. A heated near-IR source produces a signal penetrating to a depth of a few millimeters. The detected signal is a combination of reflectance and transmission components of the penetrated signal (transflection)...
Start a discussion on this article or any photonics topic in the Photonics.com Community Forum