Abstract:
Avocado and tomato production are key agricultural sectors for many economies including
South Africa. The quality of avocadoes and tomatoes that reach consumers is directly dependent on the handling at the postharvest stage. The fruit undergoes an extensive journey, and
subsequently stress, comprised of several steps, including harvesting, application of
postharvest treatments, packaging and transportation by road and sea to reach the export
markets. To date, the quantification of these external stresses on a discrete fruit has not
been measured in detail, primarily due to a lack of compatible instrumentation. This paper
demonstrates a low cost, stand-alone, open source data acquisition system, termed smAvo
and smaTo, that can be introduced effortlessly to monitor agricultural processing facilities
and transportation networks. The miniaturised Arduino sensor platform is enclosed within
a waterproof enclosure and surrounded by a 3D printed shell manufactured from morphologically compatible materials. The software is customisable to the needs of the research
project or individual transportation phases under study, providing both extensive environmental data and high-frequency tri-axis acceleration measurements that are crucial to
understanding the dynamic processes that directly affect the final quality of the fruit.
Four successful field trials demonstrate the fidelity of both the smAvo and smaTo platforms.
