The University of Florida received a $499,730 Project Grant award from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) competitive grants program.
The grant will fund research from March 2021 to March 2025 to develop an imaging approach called FRESHID to objectively evaluate post-harvest quality attributes of fresh fruits and vegetables, such as maturity, storage ability, and firmness. Researchers will combine machine learning technologies and multi-omics tools to understand post-harvest senescence and microbial spoilage processes. The goals are to identify genetic, protein, and compound markers that can serve as indicators of freshness, and use these indicators to develop an algorithm to accurately estimate freshness and detect spoilage. Outcomes aim to enable early detection of poor-quality produce to reduce food waste throughout the supply chain, and inform plant breeding to delay post-harvest senescence. The developed FRESHID tool is intended to support availability of high-quality, nutritious fresh produce through improved post-harvest logistics.
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