About this project
Organisation
Optiflux
Partners
Postharvest Group KU Leuven, Vlaams Centrum voor de Bewaring van Tuinbouwproducten
Work agendas
Organisations
Innovative method to prevent fruit and vegetable loss
After harvesting, about half of fruit and vegetables are lost during storage. The cause is the traditional storage method: the environment is not optimally measured and adjusted, so many products rot anyway. Optiflux therefore developed a new method that constantly measures the environment and automatically optimises the climate in the cold store.
The United Nations predicts that there will be eight billion inhabitants on the planet by 2030. that means the demand for food will increase enormously. Fruits and vegetables form the basis of our diet, but after harvesting, during transport and distribution of produce, some 50 per cent of the yield is lost.
To preserve fruit and vegetables, companies in the agricultural sector currently use controlled atmosphere systems. Yet those systems do not ensure that the concentration of oxygen, CO2 and nitrogen along with temperature are optimal, and much is still lost. That is why Optiflux developed a system that predicts changes in quality and therefore creates an optimal storage environment. This is done using a measurement method and software algorithms that continuously measure and process the environment in the cold store. The system automatically makes the necessary adjustments. The result: fruit and vegetables retain their highest possible quality, even after storage. Moreover, the system uses 10% less energy than conventional methods.
