Do not waste your money anymore on unripe fruits and vegetables as a revolutionary device for checking the ripeness of fruits is here now. Researchers and inventors of MIT have now developed a device that can tell about the ripeness of the fruit. A portable spectrometer has been made that can scan the fruit and by evaluating the glow of chlorophyll through ultraviolet light. This new innovative device consumes less power and moreover it is not too heavy in size and weight. Its estimated cost is around about 250$ according to the researchers at MIT. This innovative Smartphone based device can bring revolution in the world of farmers as farmers can now determine the ideal time for harvesting of fruits. It can also be used in the storage facility to sort vegetables and fruits and to check the ripeness too.
Recently two methods are used by food industry to check the ripeness of the fruit. In the first method, the firmness of the fruit is measured using penetrometers and sclerometers. The second method that we use is called as brix that measures the sugar content of the fruit juice using the refraction of light. But according to MIT researchers, both these methods are destructive. Instead of this MIT team uses the spectrometer chip and packed it along with optical filters, an ultraviolet LED and a Bluetooth module for the wireless data communication. They shine the UV light on fruit to check the ripeness of the fruit.
Ultraviolet light is used to make the chlorophyll in the skin of an apple fluoresce. The more ripper an apple or fruit is the dimmer will be the glow from chlorophyll.
Great benefits to farmers
This innovative handy device can make a big difference for farmers as they can now decide the best time for harvesting the crops. Fruit distributors, who can’t decide properly where to send their stock, can get the benefit from this gadget.
The light from the fruit that is picked by spectrometer sends the data to an android app through Bluetooth that will then compares it to previous data available of what a fruit should be like at the given stages of ripeness.
For example, the spectrometer tells that an apple has been ripening for 10 days which means that a batch of 10-day-old apples should be shipped out before the three-day-old ones do. So they should be sent to stores nearby.
This innovative handy device works properly on fruits and vegetables that have chlorophyll fluorescence in the significant amount such as oranges and bananas. Consumers now can check easily that for how many days the apple has been ripening from the baseline amount.