Optical Ethylene Analyzer for Food Crop Quality Assurance

Improved production yield is a constant objective of increasingly sophisticated agricultural practices. As Earth's population grows, higher yield is a critical mechanism for insuring adequate food supply. An effective way to increase yield is by reducing waste. Crops react to stressors by releasing ethylene at low levels. If these levels can be detected, stressors may be mitigated before crop viability is compromised. Further, detection of elevated ethylene can also eliminate compounding of post-harvest waste due to rot or senescence. The proposed high-performance ethylene sensor will provide research plant physiologists a tool with which to correlate the causes and effects of ethylene release and the means to quantitatively measure resulting mitigation strategies. Present monitors are inadequate due to sensitivity, selectivity, ruggedness or cost. New faster monitors will be enabling components for controlled plant growth, early detection of stress, precise application of ripening inhibitors and other chemical agents, and successful long-term storage and delivery. This tightly monitored life cycle will provide modern agricultural industry the tools to continually increase production yields. Vista Photonics proposes to develop a compact, rugged, low parts-per-billion (ppb) gaseous ethylene analyzer, ultimately suitable for widespread application in the agricultural industry.