A Central Queensland University researcher is planning on taking fruit quality testing technology, previously restricted to large packing houses, into the fields.

Doctor of Philosophy student Christo Liebenberg is developing a field portable Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRS) which he hopes will be a relatively low-cost handheld instrument to be used by fruit producers or agronomists wanting to experiment with different practices to improve fruit quality before harvesting.

Mr Liebenberg said current NIRS technology is relatively expensive and limited to large pack houses which use electronic grading equipment, but he aims to give producers and growers the opportunity to use the same technology in a handheld format, so that it can be taken into their orchard to carry out differentiated harvesting, or simply to assess the maturity level or sweetness of their produce.

With this new portable instrument comes a range of unique challenges. Mr Liebenberg is working to address issues such as its ability to handle ambient light, handling different instrument and/or fruit temperatures, battery charge life, ease of calibration and re-calibration and more.

“The outcome will be a low-cost handheld NIR instrument that will be complemented by newly developed chemometric software routines that will greatly simplify the development, transfer and maintenance of calibration models,” Mr Liebenberg said.

“I hope to develop an instrument with a significant competitive advantage in the market place, which will be commercialised by an instrumentation company in 2006.”.