e-Quality – Electronic Quality Assessment Solution For Agricultural Commodities For National Agricultural Market

• Project Investigator : Dr.Amitava Akuli
• Project Lead : Abra pal, Subrata Sarkar

ICAR - Indian Agricultural Research InstituteDivision of seed science & Technology New Delhi , India

• Dr. Monika A. Joshi (PI-IARI)

 

M/s R.S. ENTERPRISES

It is observed in the overall system of agri-output marketing that information asymmetry leads to market distortions. The asymmetry could be due to a lack of proper information dissemination (e.g., prevalent prices), lack of awareness of benchmarks (e.g., quality norms), variations in quality assessment (arbitrariness), lack of standardized methodology (certifications) etc. Furthermore, the price discovery mechanisms in vogue are arbitrary and opaque, leaving the seller and buyer with very few options. As a result, distress sale is a common phenomenon. One way to reduce this stress on the system is by allowing access to marketable produce to a larger population of buyers. However, a buyer from a remote location would necessarily require authorized quality certification, which is not prevalent now. Therefore, the concept of “e-Quality” is based on the principle that technology can play an important role in levelling market distortions, thereby providing equal opportunities for optimizing returns to all stakeholders in the agri - output marketing system.

The major objectives of this proposed project are:

• To develop a hardware and software framework for assessment of appearance based quality parameters of selected agricultural products (crops/ vegetables/ spices) as per requirement of eNAM (total 15 crops/fruits/vegetables).
• To deploy the solution and perform the validation of the developed solution.

The perceived significant outcomes are:

• A bench-top conveyorized machine vision platform for quality assaying of selected food grains (total 12 Crops).
• Identified crops: Tur, Moong, Masoor, Maize, Bengal Gram, Kabuli Chana, Bajra, Jowar, Soya Bean, Wheat, Peanut Kernel, Rajma.
• A conveyorized machine vision solution(s) for quality assaying of selected vegetables (tomato), fruits (lichi) and spice (Chilli).
• Deployment and performance evaluation of the developed solutions.