The research team from IISER has developed an LED light source that emit light simultaneously in two different wavelength ranges, which makes it easier to detect the freshness of fruit and vegetables. Upon flashing the light on the food, it would become easier for those handling the fruits or vegetables, which generally include farmers, stockists, consumers, vendors, store owners to detect the rot in them even though they may appear to look fresh from the outside. What’s stunning about this new innovation is its capacity to spot the early stages of decay, which can ensure that the produce continues to remain suitable for consumption.
Read: July 2023 Issue of Food Infotech Magazine.
Perovskite, which is a material used by this device has turned out to become an ideal tool for quality control in the food industry. Angshuman Nag and his team at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) are now proposing a perovskite application in LED technology that could simplify the quality control of fresh fruit and vegetables and contact-free monitoring of food.
Angshuman Nag along with his team had utilized modified LEDs to assess apples or strawberries and observed dark spots that were not visible in standard camera images. Illuminating the food with both white and NIR light revealed normal colouring that could be seen by the naked eye, as well as those parts which were starting to rot, but not yet visibly so, stated Angshuman Nag.
NIR has been in use in the food industry to examine freshness in fruit and vegetables. Sajid Saikia stated – “Food contains water, which absorbs the broad near-infrared emission at around 1000 nm. The more water that is present [due to rotting], the greater the absorption of near-infrared radiation, yielding darker contrast in an image taken under near-infrared radiation. This easy, non-invasive imaging process can estimate the water content in different parts of food, assessing its freshness.”
