From saving a quarter-pound of fruit per box to artificial intelligence-driven automation, digital technology is redefining the ripening room, says David Byrne, vice president of sales for Thermal Technologies.
“Tracking technology that tells you when and where your bananas originated and how long they spent in transit,” he says. “[There are] digital ripening controls and sensors that allow you to ripen proactively with pinpoint control over the results and, of course, the immense data-processing capabilities of artificial intelligence.”
Today’s ripening rooms help mitigate any potential issues that could occur in the transportation of bananas, Byrne says. Each step can impact the conversion of starch to sugars that occurs during ripening. He points out the technology in these modern rooms can take fruit that is poorly handled and allow the ripener to catch that fruit and stabilize it so it doesn’t arrive at the store overripe.
“Advanced probes and sensors also let you know the exact condition of the fruit and the room in real time, giving you the ability to monitor and adjust the ripening process as needed to ensure the best ripening results,” he says.
Byrne says, in the past, sensors that were used to monitor carbon dioxide and ethylene were unreliable. While ethylene speeds up ripening and CO2 inhibits ripening, ripening rooms in the past used venting to control these rooms by a timetable. Modern technology has streamlined that process.
“With the recent rollout of our new, highly reliable RipeScan optical gas analyzer, we can now control ripening based on gas levels in the room, venting when and as needed based on gases being produced during ripening,” Byrne says.
Maximizing Weight and Shelf Life
Other innovative technologies that also help reduce food waste include ultrasonic humidification and low TD (temperature difference) coils, which maintain high relative humidity naturally. Byrne says this can mean an additional quarter-pound more weight per box and increased shelf life by up to 12 hours or more.
“Together, they reduce stress on the fruit while protecting against dehydration and scarring,” he says.
Byrne says ripening rooms with multiple temperature control zones can ripen bananas to different color stages in the same unit. This means shippers could ship 10 pallets of the same color nearly every day using only three 20-pallet-capacity rooms. These ripening cycles can be synced to shipping schedules, he adds.
Pressurized ripening rooms also offer shippers flexibility, Byrne says, with the ability to ripen multiple fruits in the same room, such as one cycle for bananas and the next cycle for avocados. He says these rooms deliver consistent high-volume airflow to create uniform quality and color.
“Since ripening is essentially an organic process, the type of box or container doesn’t matter as long as we can uniformly produce the proper environmental conditions for every piece of fruit in the room,” he says.
Future of Automated Ripening
Looking ahead, Byrne says some large retailers have started to push for standardizing the ripening process across all distribution centers.
“The goal is to potentially automate the ripening process to achieve predictable, uniform ripening results at every store location, with centralized oversight at the corporate level,” he says.
Thermal Technologies has partnered with Strella Biotech, which offers an AI-assisted platform that deploys predictive data modeling to automate ripening. Byrne says Strella has begun to roll out this platform to some large retailers using Thermal Technologies’ rooms, which he says points to the continuing evolution of AI in the fresh produce industry space.
While Byrne says it’s hard to predict the future, he says it’s important for the fresh produce industry to be ready for what’s to come.
“From our perspective, the key is staying plugged in to all applicable technologies, to be out in front and prepared to implement them as they evolve, to stay flexible and to be ready to incorporate advancements when and as needed, to keep our clients on the cutting edge of technologies that maximize the fruit quality and ripening efficiency,” he says.
