Technology And Device For Quality And Safety Traceabilitv Of Navel Oranges Using A High Throughput Sorting System

Nowadays, production and distribution systems of agri-products are becoming more and more interdependent, integrated, and globalized. Based on the information communication technologies (ICTs) and the internet of things (IOT) technologies, traceability through the entire agri-products supply chain will effectively address safety, quality, and defense issues of agri-products by providing precise, real-time, transparent, and reliable information from farm to table. Traceability systems are capable of minimizing the degree of information asymmetry between producers and consumers by collecting and sharing information among all partners of the supply chain, promoting the responsibility for agri-product safety by implementing track and trace functions along the supply chain, and helping strengthen confidence of the customers toward agri-products. Since traceability systems can be an important tool for monitoring and managing agri-product flows through the supply chains, many developing and developed countries around the world have paid great attention on them and tried to introduce traceability into various kinds of agri-product supply chains.The thesis started with a comprehensive differentiation and analysis of concepts and theories in the traceability field, and made a comparative study on the development of domestic and international food safety traceability system. This project studied gave a try in the full batch traceability of small fruit based on the complex supply chain processes, and provided a reference for the further study of other kinds of fruit that was also classified and processed. Main results of this research were as follows:(1) A comparative study on the basic concepts and theories of agri-product/food safety traceability was made. Some concepts that in the fuzzy field of traceability were precisely defined through comparative analyse and told apart the connotation and extension of the concepts. The relationship between global agri-products/food quality and safety management system and traceability was summarized.(2) A comprehensive and detailed comparative study on the latest developmental progress of the agri-product traceability all over the world was made. This study, was comprised of three main aspects:laws and regulations, standards and norms, and promotion and implementation. From five aspects about institution, actualization scheme, traceability systems, validation and verification, the main features, a distinct conclusion was made. This conclusion pointed out that comprehensiveness and conciseness was the trend of agricultural traceability system. China was still in the early stage of traceability system development. Coordination of laws, standards and promotion, information systems integration, coordination of supply chain participant rights, responsibilities and benefits, refinement and simplification of the processes and strain, and traceability accuracy improvement were key aspects that China needed to focus on for the development and promotion of Chinese food quality and safety traceability.(3) Naval orange and its whole supply chain based on the high throughput sorting system were the study object due to its small size and producted in large batch quantities in China. The sector of commercialization process and sort was the key point. Based on the analysis of naval orange supply chain mode, process, quality and safety hazards and critical control points(CCPs), a scheme for the traceability of the whole naval orange supply chain was laid out. It was composed of traceability information hierarchy theory, traceability coding system, traceability information management system and related hardware devices. It aimed at solving three key issues that had been settled down for realizing the traceability of the whole naval orange supply chain based on high throughout sorting system:integration and decomposition of the logistic batch, conversion of the logistic unit before and after processing sector and rupture of logistic and information flow between the various entities in the supply chain.(4) A four-level traceability information hierarchy theory was developed. The first level was composed of multiple traceability information items and paremeters; the second level was composed of six basic traceability information factors:who, what, when, where, event and which organization; the third level was composed of traceability information elements from different supply chain processes; and the fourth level was composed of traceability information clusters from three main supply chain sectors:production sector, process sector and vendition sector.(5) According to requirements of the precise batch traceability, a traceability coding system for the whole naval orange supply chain based on the high throughput sorting system was designed, including basic codes, concatenated codes, commodity traceability codes and the linkage between the codes. It was not only adapted to the current situation of practical naval orange production in China, but also compatible with GS1 coding standard. A comprehensive identification solution was presented, which introducted the barcode and RFID technology at due to the consideration of the conversion of the logistic unit.(6) A traceability information management system for the whole naval orange supply chain was designed and implemented, which was based on three core subsystems:the orchard subsystem, the processing and distribution center subsystem and the supermarket subsystem. A series of devices that worked with the traceability information management system were developed, including fruit baskets and pallets identification generating device, fruit source information acquisition and upload device, traceability labels preprinted software and traceability labels matching device. The whole solution for naval orange full supply chain traceability had been tried out in lab by simulating the real situation of naval orange supply chain. The result showed that full traceability information of all these oranges could be obtained through the solution, although the normative and integrity of the supply chain information, requirement of tremendous manual input, and ease of operation needed to be improved in the futrue.