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Agriculture

Grading, processing and sorting of agricultural produce is essential for quality and cost control. Current best practice inspection methods rely on external inspection and are limited. They often involve samples tested in laboratories. Current methods do not and cannot guarantee full quality control. Some important concerns, such as internal damage, acidity, bruising and pests remain invisible.

Magnetic Resonance can address these problems. It is non-toxic, non-invasive and extremely versatile. It involves no radiation. Aspect’s system was specifically developed to perform simultaneous rapid characterization of the chemical and structural composition of fruits and vegetables. Aspect’s system is the first commercially available system for the post-harvest industry that can provide full internal structure analysis accompanied with chemical analysis ("taste", ripeness) for the post-harvest industry. It allows commercial conveyor belts to pass through a high-resolution magnet, a first in the magnetic resonance field. Thus, high speed sorting by internal analysis can be performed on-line.

Aspect’s system is currently in beta trials for several applications: citrus, dates, apples, tomatoes and hatcheries. Aspect’s Agriculture solution has been developed in association with the MRI research laboratory at the University of California, Davis, led by Professor Mike McCarthy.

Agriculture Applications