STRAWBERRY PACKING & HANDLIND SYSTEMS
Strawberries and other types of soft fruit require the utmost careful handling and efficient processing. The engineers at TAKS Handling Systems took this as the starting point for the development of a modular packing line exclusively for strawberries and soft fruits. Our high quality packing lines will save labor costs and increases efficiency. The TAKS Handling Systems engineers compose a comprehensive modular system for every situation, based on the required capacity. After harvesting, there’s the option of having the punnets automatically fetched from the crates so they can be individually weighed. Our R-Packing Line ensures full registration of data and activities for your management administration.
Our modular harvest processing system can be easily adapted and is guaranteed to meet all your specific requirements. Options like integrated scales, check weights and flow pack wrappers will give you the possibility of processing the harvest into retail packages. The entire proc
Fruit Physiology and Postharvest Management of Strawberry packing
Home > Books > Strawberry - Pre- and Post-Harvest Management Techniques for Higher Fruit Quality
Strawberry is famous for its unique flavor and delicacy among the consumers all around the world. Nowadays, the concept of postharvest management is not only confined to preserving the nutritional attributes but also extended up to flavor that includes aroma. Strawberry is a nonclimacteric fruit and its short storage life and strategic sales in the market after harvest had compelled researchers to utilize technologies like cool store, modified atmospheric packaging, controlled atmospheric storage, different packaging systems, fumigation with nitric oxide, and diversified chemical treatments to preserve fruits for longer time. To apply or innovate new technology to extend life of strawberry fruits in the postharvest area, it is necessary to understand the physiology and biochemistry of fruits. This chapter reviews fruit physiology, recent trends, and future prospects in the postharvest management of strawberry.
STRAWBERRY PACKING PROCESS
method for processing a fruit product such as fresh strawberries provides greatly prolonged shelf life by cooling the strawberries, washing the strawberries in a first chilled chlorine bath, slicing the strawberries to provide sliced strawberries, washing the sliced strawberries in a second chilled chlorine bath, draining the sliced strawberries to remove moisture therefrom, washing the sliced strawberries in a bath that comprises a citric acid and tribasic calcium solution, drying the sliced berries with de-humidified air, placing a selected weight of the strawberries into each one of a plurality of gas-impermeable containers, and sealing the containers with a breathable film.
This invention relates to methods for preparing and preserving fresh, ripe, edible fruit pieces such as strawberries so that the fruit may be stored for long periods of time without appreciable loss of natural flavor, color and texture. More particularly, the method pertains to the cutting and/or segmenting of fresh edible strawberry tissue into pieces, packing the strawberry pieces in a container, sealing the container, re-cooling the sealed containers, and storing the container at refrigerated temperatures.
It is well-known that the quality of whole picked or cut fresh fruit deteriorates rapidly at ambient temperatures. The deterioration rate can be slowed, thereby enabling the fruit to be retained for longer shelf-life, when the fruit is maintained at refrigerated storage temperatures. In most cases, the shelf-life of fresh, ripe whole fruit at refrigerated temperatures of 1° C. to 13° C. ranges from about three days to six weeks, depending in part on fruit type. Many fruits are picked and packed in the unripe stage in order to lengthen their shelf-life at both ambient and refrigerated temperatures. Unfortunately, with this practice, the fruit frequently lacks or fails to develop optimum ripe-fruit flavor, texture and color. Fruits harvested at the peak of ripeness possess high quality attributes that are strongly desired by consumers.
Thus, the development or discovery of a method to capture and retain the high quality attributes of ripe fruits for prolonged storage periods would be extremely advantageous. If all whole picked ripe fruits could be treated as one and stored under refrigeration without regard to any specific temperature requirement, then the storability and distribution of the fruits would be simple. Many types of fruits could, for example, be held in one constant temperature refrigerated room, or could be transported in one refrigerated truck at a common refrigeration temperature.
However, the situation is not that simple. Each species of whole fresh fruit must be stored within a specific custom temperature range so that acceptable quality for that particular fruit type can be retained.
In addition to a temperature factor, the composition of gases in the storage atmosphere enveloping the fruit can influence and prolong the storage life of whole fresh fruits. In particular, a moderately high level of carbon dioxide (2% to 10%) and reduced levels of oxygen (2% to 16%) in controlled atmosphere storage can significantly increase the shelf life of certain fruits such as apples, pears, strawberries and bananas. There is evidence that higher carbon dioxide levels and lower oxygen levels advantageously lower the respiration and ripening rates of the whole fruit. On the negative side, however, undesirable physiological disorders and deterioration in quality of the fruit may occur. In particular, strong off-flavor in the fruits may develop.
Modified atmosphere packaging is the term commonly used for the storage of food in a flexible or semi-flexible bag or pouch with an internal atmosphere which is not controlled but may indeed vary in composition during storage of the commodity due to gas transmission through the walls of the bag or pouch. Plastic films have been used to cover whole fruits in containers so that the atmosphere enveloping the fruit can be modified. Polyethylene box liners, either sealed or unsealed, have been employed commercially for some time for the storage and transportation of apples and pears. It has been found that the respiration of the whole fruit in a sealed, air containing, polyethylene bag will cause a rise in carbon dioxide level and a corresponding reduction in oxygen content in the bag interior. High levels of carbon dioxide (5% or higher) have been found to be harmful because they can cause unsightly fruit discoloration and "off-flavor" development. This is due to carbon dioxide toxicity. To reduce the risk of carbon dioxide toxicity to the whole fruit, the bags are either unsealed or perforated to permit atmosphere exchange, or packets of fresh hydrated lime, which reacts with the carbon dioxide to reduce its level, are placed in the bag prior to sealing.
STRAWBERRY PACKING SOLUTION
Effect of different packaging materials on postharvest quality of cv. Envie2 strawberry Abstract Strawberry fruits require appropriate storage technology to maintain post harvest quality. In order to improve the shelf-life and to reduce the decrease of qualitative and nutraceutical characteristics the effects of different packaging conditions were observed comparing biobased and polypropylene perforated films. Sample units of 0,250 Kg strawberries cv. Envie2 flowpacked have been stored under two different conditions: in cool room at +2°C for 96 hours (like in an ideal supply chain) and in a cool room at +2°C for 48 h followed by storage at room temperature (+20°C) up to 96 hours from start. Fruits packed with biobased film and stored at +2°C showed the better results to preserve the qualitative traits maintaining the best headspace composition (%) for all the storage time.
STRAWBERRY PACKING APP
This paper describes a strawberry-harvesting robot, a packing robot, and a movable bench system. The harvesting and packing operations in strawberry production require harder, more time-consuming work compared to other operations such as transplanting and chemical spraying, making automation of these tasks desirable. Since harvesting and packing operation account for half of total working hours, automation of these tasks are strongly desired. First of all, based on the findings of many studies on strawberry-harvesting robots for soil culture and elevated substrate culture, our institute of the Bio-oriented Technology Research Advancement Institution and Shibuya Seiki developed a commercial model of a strawberry-harvesting robot, which is chiefly composed a cylindrical manipulator, machine vision, an end-effector, and traveling platform. The results showed an average 54.9% harvesting success rate, 8.6 s cycle time of picking operation, and 102.5 m/h work efficiency in hanging-type growing beds in an experimental greenhouse. Secondly, a prototype automatic packing robot consisting of a supply unit and a packing unit was developed. The supply unit picks up strawberries from a harvesting container, and the packing unit sucks each fruit from calyx side and locates its orientation into a tray. Performance testing showed that automatic packing had a task success rate of 97.3%, with a process time per fruit of 7.3 s. Thirdly, a movable bench system was developed, which makes planting beds rotate in longitudinal and lateral ways. This system brought high density production and labour saving operation at a fixed position, such as crop maintenance and harvesting. By setting up the main body of a strawberry-harvesting robot on working space, unmanned operation technique was developed and tested in an experimental greenhouse. Field experiments of these new automation technologies were conducted and gave a potential of practical use.
POST HARVEST STRAWBERRY PACKING QUALITY
Implementation and post-harvest sorting system are the most essential parts in agriculture and plantations; they lead to the quality and quantity maintenance of agricultural products. Some crops need to do grading and sorting techniques. Sorting functions to filter the type and quality of plants with a grading system and this method has also been carried out on potato, coffee and citrus plantations. In Indonesia, the sorting system is processed manually; so that the time process takes time and causes long queues when packaging. In consequence, the plantation products would be stored longer and it causes rotting process to the plantation products. In some developed countries, the sorting system is conducted with the computerized-system-assisted through the aid of optics or lenses stored on a conveyor machine. As the help of computer sorting equips with artificial intelligence methods; so that the computer is able to calculate and trade the types of plants. The results of plantations and even the system would be possibly able to recognize the types of diseases in plants. This AI technique has been applied in the sorting system of strawberry. The agricultural products of this fruit have a high selling value, the grading process is used to classify strawberry sizes in order to increase sales results with grading value parameters with Oblate, Globose, Conic, long Conic, and Conic. The parameters are assessed by size and whether there are defects in the fruit, so that the selling value is high, AI techniques has been proven to facilitate the process of sorting which capable of detailing each object's texture and more precision with an accuracy of 95%.