Future of Agriculture

No More Guessing — Detecting the Quality of Fruits with Ultrasound

An ingenious way to know when the fruit is ready for harvest

We’d love to know precisely when the fruit is ripe, not a moment early nor too late. Photo by Amie Dawson from Unsplash.

Think of the fruit you’re about to eat.

How do you know it’s ready and not green?

You might judge it by the color of the surface, but that doesn’t work with fruits like watermelon or avocado.

Okay, now you have to touch it, tap it, but you’re still not 100% certain that you’ll get it right.

Now think of increasing the scale of your decision.

Imagine trying to decide when to cut thousands of fruits at the right time so that you don’t end up with a bunch of useless products. Well, they might not be useless if you harvest them too early, but the delivery would be delayed, and that would hurt your pocket as a farmer or business owner.

On the other hand, if you harvest it late, that’ll mean less time on the supermarket shelf and more potential waste.

In some instances, it’s not just a matter of timely delivery. Fruit quality is also a key factor here.

Take the kiwi as an example.