Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Sensors And Portable Instruments For Postharvest Agriculture, Ryan M. Lerud

Dissertations and Theses

The sensing needs for the fresh produce industry can be split into two primary stages: during maturation in the field, also referred to as Precision Farming, and during storage and transport of the produce, or Postharvest Storage. This work seeks to improve the accuracy and reliability of commercially available electrochemical and spectroscopic sensors tailored to the sensing needs of the fresh produce industry. For electrochemical sensing, this study proposes the use of an inline filter to remove polar organic compounds, which can interfere with the readings of a platinum-based electrochemical sensor. A 50% improvement in measurement accuracy was achieved when …