PEI GROWING COMPANY INTRODUCES MONITORING TOOL ON PACKING LINE.
MACHINE-LEARNING driven crop insights tool provider HarvestEye has partnered with one of Prince Edward Island’s (PEI) prominent potato growers, G Visser & Sons, to help the company to monitor the size, shape and variability of potatoes on one of its packing lines.
The packing line sees 500 thousand pounds of produce pass through on a weekly basis. The system will aim to provide greater quality control to the grading process, complementing the manual work undertaken by sorters on the conveyer belt.
HarvestEye uses an online portal to provide visibility on root crop harvests, currently including potatoes and onions. The system can be fitted to grading equipment, harvest machinery for when the crop is being lifted, as well as a handheld system that can be used for in-field test digs.
General Manager at HarvestEye, Harry Tinson, said: “It enables us to broaden our understanding of how HarvestEye can support growers, packers and processors, particularly in respect to the challenges pertinent to PEI and other North American potato growing regions, from rich red soils unique to the island to tough conditions amid fluctuating temperature ranges.”
Chief Operating Officer at G Visser & Sons, Adam Jay, said: “While we proudly rely on human intuition with our team of quality sorters, we were looking to implement a system that could provide a passive real-time monitoring tool to more quantifiably evaluate shrink, reducing the impact of potential human errors, such as how fatigue can lead to inconsistent performance.
“After initially attempting to develop our own optical system, we discovered HarvestEye while attending Fruit Logistica and were impressed by how the system could apply to our needs. Having now become accustomed to the system in operation on one of our packing lines, we have found HarvestEye’s daily reporting to be incredibly insightful. It is a tool that we believe can help us continue to provide the high quality products that our customers require and the data to help ensure that we optimise the return for the grower of each lot of potatoes.”
As the partnership develops, G Visser & Sons hopes to expand the integration of HarvestEye across more of its operations.
