FARMSOFT FRESH PRODUCE QUALITY control
Farmsoft QC Quality control app makes fresh produce quality control rapid and accurate for all fresh produce packers: cherry, berry, onion, pepper & capsicum, avocado, potato quality, broccoli, salad quality control, spinach, lettuce, cucumber, tomato quality, citrus, asparagus, garlic quality control app, carrot quality, bean, mango, leafy greens, fresh cut quality control, food service quality app, coleslaw quality, strawberry quality control app, grape quality, meat quality control app, flower quality.
Fresh produce quality control app for fresh produce blockchain traceability. Quality control app for meat products, export/import.
Quality assurance schemes for fresh produce
Page last updated: Tuesday, 24 August 2021 - 8:30am
Fresh food businesses are faced with the challenge of creating a food safety culture, maintaining best practice and retaining customer confidence, while effectively managing overall costs.
Quality assurance in the food production sector is rigorous but defining quality assurance, knowing and assessing the food safety risks and doing your research on code compliance is a step in the right direction.
Defining quality assurance
Quality assurance (QA) schemes for fresh produce are designed to enable producers to demonstrate that their on-farm practices allow them to produce safe food products that meet Australian food safety standards under the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code (the Code).
Quality Control in the Produce Industry
The fresh fruit & vegetable industry is a fascinating place to be. Don’t think of it as watching asparagus growing in a field. Think of a vast industry that operates with just-in-time delivery of perishable products, many with limited shelf life and very specific storage temperatures. As someone said to me many years ago when he had a load of California table grapes stuck at the border, “This isn’t hardware, you know!”
Take a look around a produce department. Look at where all of those products came from. Carrots from Bradford. Tomatoes from Leamington. Kiwi from Italy. Grapes from South Africa. Asparagus from Peru. The list goes on and on. So how can it all look so good at your local store when it has travelled for hours, days or weeks? Quality control (QC) at multiple points in the journey.
The QC people ensure that whatever arrives at their back door is what was ordered by the buyers. It has to be fresh, crisp and bright. If it is dull, wilted, discolored or decayed, it isn’t going to make it to the retail displays. Decisions have to be taken quickly. Is it to be rejected or regraded? Was it in suitable shipping condition before it left its point of origin, or was it damaged in transit? Is it the correct variety, size, color, firmness or sweetness?
Fresh produce has to be cut, dug or picked. It has to be cooled as quickly as possible. It has to be graded to some sort of grade standards or retail specifications. It has to be properly packed and palletized in a manner that ensures that it is delivered in saleable condition. A receiver has to check temperatures on arrival. A QC person has to make sure that the product actually meets certain quality and condition criteria on arrival. All of this has to be done with international good agricultural practices in mind, and food safety at the forefront of every turn that the produce takes.
Where could you fit into this massive industry? Think of what you know, or what you want to learn. You don’t need to know how to drive a tractor if you live in the city. You don’t need to know how to grade citrus fruit if you live in Northern Ontario, either. Canada relies on over 60,000 temporary foreign workers every year to plant, care for, harvest and pack fresh fruits and vegetable across Canada. It is hard work, long hours, and the weather does not always cooperate. It can be very rewarding to harvest what you tended to during the growing season.
If you want to work in the produce industry in Ontario, start here. This new Ontario website gathers job listings and resources for grocery retail, food processing, distribution, agriculture and agribusinesses.
You can work on a farm without having a bundle of certifications, but you may wish to pursue some training to get ahead. A good understanding of good agricultural practices and food safety can be gleaned from this website: https://www.canadagap.ca/ If you secure employment on a farm, in a greenhouse, or even in a packing plant, you may wish to sign up for the training and be certified. The same goes for handling agricultural chemicals in Ontario. Information on that program is here:
If you want to operate machinery in your new job, you will need this type of certification here:
People who are going for an interview for a quality control job should know a little about grade standards and why we have them. Grade standards are considered to be a common language in the produce industry. This means that a Canadian importer could use a broker in the United States to source table grapes from Chile, and everybody knows what is expected. In Canada, we have grade standards for thirty fresh fruits and vegetables. They are housed in the Safe Food For Canadians Regulations here:
If you are not sure what you just read, those grade standards are interpreted here in government control manuals here:
It doesn’t matter if you live in the country or the city, QC is just as important at shipping point as it is at destination. Shippers have to ensure that what is leaving the packing plant is going to meet the customers’ requirements. QC staff in the receiving warehouses have to make sure that what is arriving is up to standard. If something is “just passing through” a retail chain’s distribution Centre, a wholesale’s warehouse on the way to a retailer, or a cold storage, QC will most likely check the produce again on the way out.
Good food is expensive, and it requires good people throughout the supply chain to monitor it. If you think that you have what it takes, talk to someone. Visit a grower, make an appointment to meet QC people in the wholesale or retail business, talk to your local green grocer or produce manager. Start at your local retail store if that is your only option. Get a foot in the door and learn.
What is quality control in fruits and vegetables?
When it comes to buying in a supermarket, a fruit & vegetable store or in a market, they tend to recognize certain characteristics of the fruits and vegetables they consume: the touch, the size, the consistency and, of course, the flavor. To make this experience consistent, all fruits and vegetables go through a quality control that allows to test that what the consumer is expecting will be effectively fulfilled.
What is quality control?
It is an exploration carried out at different levels and scales to fruits and vegetables to determine if they adequately comply with the expected characteristics to reach a final consumer.
What is taken into account in a quality control?
External characteristics
1. Firmness
This feature helps to determine the degree of ripeness of a fruit, is done regularly with a penetrometer directly from the fruit in the field.
2. Color
This may be one of the most important characteristics, given it allows the consumer to have the feeling that a product is in good condition. There are two ways to perform this measurement: visually or instrumentally, where you can resort to a color chart inside which the product must be or performed with a colorimeter.
3.Morphology
It is everything that involves the physical form of the fruit or vegetable, such as size, weight or curvature. Instruments such as scales, sizing machines and tape measures are used to make this measurement.
4. Smell
Especially in fruits such as citrus, a factor that can be decisive is the aroma that the fruit gives off. This smell comes from aromatic substances present in both the skin and the pulp. Currently, one way to measure it through technology is through a gas chromatography combined with mass spectrometry.
Internal characteristics
1. Soluble solids
This measurement is made with a refractometer and allows to know the amount of sugar present in a sample, normally known as the brix scale. This number allows not only to know the amount of sugars, but also indicates the maturity of the fruit and indicates the best time to harvest it.
2. Acidity
It is obtained through the juice of the fruit with a pH electrode. In addition to the level of acidity present in the product being known, it allows to know what possibility exists of proliferation of microbes, since this factor directly affects the ease with which external agents can enter.
The quality control is carried out from the harvest in the field until its arrival to the supermarkets, but as we can see a great part of the process is carried out in the production, where the producers ensure that the maturation and physiognomy of the product is the suitable one so that when it arrives to the final consumer it has enough life to be bought and, later, eaten.
A good treatment in the quality control allows the products to always arrive fresh and with good flavor to the plate of dozens of homes, avoiding this way dozens of wastes in the way!
FRESH PRODUCE QUALITY TESTING
FRUITS & VEGETABLES QUALITY CONTROL
Fruits & Vegetable controls
Fruits and vegetables are delicate products in regards to shipping. Due to this, HQTS understand the need for safe and fast shipment and storage. With this in mind, we provide a wide variety of control services to better understand your supply chain processes and suppliers’ capability to align with your business objectives.
These services include:
Pre-production control
During production control
Pre-shipment control
Sampling Services
Loading Supervision/Discharging Supervision
Survey/Damage Survey
Production Monitoring
Tally Services
Fresh Produce Factory control Audits.
Food products perish quickly. It is essential to choose a Factory that uses correct and efficient manufacturing processes. We assist in this decision-making process by providing controls audits to look at suppliers activities, such as their food hygiene and storage capabilities. This helps in making the right business decisions to allow for a safe and efficient supply chain.
Our Factory controls include:
Social Compliance Audits
Factory Technical Capability Audits
Food Hygiene Audits
Storage Audits
Fruit and Vegetables Testing
We conduct an extensive array of testing for fruit and vegetables, allowing for a clear understanding of their quality. These tests look for potential risks within the product to minimize any delays or potential dangers. We also engage in shipment tests to make sure proper packaging and storage practices are upheld. Testing is an essential part of a safe supply chain, and HQTS provides innovative and ever-evolving solutions.
Our tests include:
Physical Testing
Chemical Component Analysis
Microbiological Test
Sensory Test
Nutrition testing
Food Contact and Package Testing
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