Every year a large amount of greenhouse-grown food goes to waste because of non-optimized yield planning, logistics, etc. Tomatoes are one of the most consumed vegetables both in the EU and worldwide, and it is estimated that around 3 mill. tonnes of tomatoes are wasted in the EU annually. This leads to inefficient use of resources and economic loss.​

Tomato loss and waste are observed throughout the whole supply chain.

Most often this is a result of overestimating the yield and ripening time as well as not utilizing the fruits which are “unsuited” for consumption because they have the wrong colour, shape or other defects.

In Europe, around 30% of all fruits and vegetables are discarded each year just because of their appearance. A conservative estimate for the price increase for the consumers is 4 € per kg, so the waste makes healthy foods less affordable. Furthermore, the environmental impact of production is increased. 

Computer-vision based systems to monitor growing vegetables 

Tomato waste in greenhouses can be reduced dramatically by planning the harvest time and estimating the yield more precisely.

This can be done by implementing computer-vison-based systems which would allow automatic monitoring of the grown vegetables inside the greenhouse and would identify the ripeness level of the fruits.

Such a system, which is what will be developed in this living lab, can also identify and estimate the amount of fruit that lacks a look that is appealing to the consumer allowing planning for alternative uses.