Sweet-APPS

Background

Consumers demand their produce be fresh. But, the only indicator of freshness available to a shopper is appearance. To attract sales, breeders and growers have worked hard to achieve produce uniformity for common items like cabbage, potatoes, peaches plums or strawberries. Sweetpotatoes, a produce estimated at $324 million in North Carolina in 2019, vary the most in size and shape when compared to all fresh produce items. As an example, the price per pound of an overly large, overly small or misshaped sweetpotato is frequently discounted as much as 80- 90% of the value of a root grading US No. 1. Consistent produce/food quality may be achieved by bridging knowledge gaps between natural ecosystems and anthropogenic agricultural production dynamics.

Over the past several years, the sweetpotato industry has moved toward optical sorting and grading technologies to improve packing efficiency. Although this technology has been a significant step forward for the industry, the addition of tailored technologies developed by the NC State Sweet-Apps project will provide new value to the industry by building capacity to distinguish defects in stored sweetpotato roots that reduce marketability and limit profit margins (e.g., root shape, internal necrosis, surface blemishes).