Hyperspectral Imaging Fights Food Waste
PHOTONICS
By Abi Ramanan and Gustav Nipe
Despite being the world’s most globalized industry, agriculture is extremely inefficient. Global supply chains have been mechanized but not information-enabled, and they have not yet fully benefited from the explosion of digital technologies that have helped in other sectors, such as pharmaceuticals or health care.
At the same time, a third of all food produced in the world is wasted. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, generating about 8 percent of global carbon emissions annually. More than 20 percent of meat produced globally is wasted; for fruits and vegetables, it is a staggering 45 percent.
Non-invasive, rapid, objective techniques for monitoring food products are essential to improving the sorting and distribution processes. This is where ImpactVision's hyperspectral imaging has great promise. The technique acquires both spectral and spatial data; it then visualizes physical and chemical constituents non-invasively in real time and can facilitate a shift toward supply chains where 100 percent of the products can be tested.