Flexible wireless in situ optical sensing system for banana ripening monitoring

Determining the ripening level of bananas in the environment of banana ripening plays an important role in ensuring the quality of bananas, reducing losses and waste, and improving economic benefits. Traditional monitoring methods face a series of challenges such as inefficiency, high energy consumption, and high cost. This paper aims to develop a flexible wireless in situ optical sensing system (FIS) for banana ripening monitoring with a good prediction effect, low energy consumption, and high economy. When monitoring the ripening process, the ripeness of the bananas can be accurately determined without taking out the bananas. Among them, the prediction effect on soluble solid content and a* is the best, the residual predictive deviation value is above 3, and the classification accuracy is as high as 95%. Compared to other commercially available spectrometers, the device exhibits the lowest power consumption characteristics. The theoretical maximum energy consumption of the FIS is only 627 mW, and a single measurement only consumes 15 J. The overall price of the FIS does not exceed $60. The application of the FIS can effectively reduce the waste of bananas during the ripening process, and greatly alleviate the labor-intensive and inefficient problems of fruit maturity monitoring, thereby promoting more sustainable and cleaner production in the banana industry.