18 replies to this topic

[lenga]

We are manufacturer of frozen vegetables. Now we have the problem of insect in our products. we are checking by eyes. Is there any machine that can detect insects inside frozen vegetable?
Please help me to solve this problem.
Thanks.

[GMO]

I doubt there is a detector. Although a frozen insect isn't pleasant I would accept that more than a metal nut but then I know how difficult it would be to detect it.

IMO depending on the vegetable there are a couple of ways to go. The best way is probably to go for a grids or mesh system. This could be for the size of vegetable would be low cost and likely to be effective to remove about 90% of your insects especially if combined with washing etc. Unfortunately some will still get through and if your insects you're concerned about are similar size to your vegetable pieces, the only alternative is a vision system. This is likely to be very expensive and not very effective from my experience with vision systems. IME eyes are better than vision systems if the line is going slowly enough and the "eyes" are rotated but then maybe I've just had really bad luck with vision systems! If you do go down the vision route, make sure you get a contract which witholds payment until certain performance criteria are established and proven to your satisfaction!

[Charles.C]

Dear GMO,

Fascinating stuff.

What exactly is a "vision" system ? Some kind of robot eye ? (presumably a feminine one )

Actually, (small) insects sounds a lot more pleasant than the parts of rodents which are stated to occasionally turn up in the conveyor lines of mass-chopped leafy vegetables.

Rgds / Charles.C

[lenga]

thanks for all of your oppinions.
I would like to make clear which matters I want you to give solutions.
We produces frozen grilled eggplants, sometime we got complaint of insect inside frozen eggplant.
Now I wonder there is any machine that can check inside eggplant.
We have X-ray machine and we already checked our product by X-ray machine but this machine can not detect insect because insect is also organic material (the same of eggplant).
is there any comment, please inform me.
Thanks.

[GMO]

So has the insect eaten into the eggplant before the eggplant has been processed cut etc? What kind of insect (size etc)?

[Mike Green]

So has the insect eaten into the eggplant before the eggplant has been processed cut etc? What kind of insect (size etc)?

I guess its the old enemy of the aubergine eater- the FSB (fruit and shoot borer)- over 70% crop loss has been recorded due to this pest

i think the problem needs to be dealt with by the supplier/grower- traditionally this has been with massive amounts of insecticide and/or 100% inspection( for 'bore holes')- alternatively there is an fsb resistant eggplant 'in development' for an environmentally friendly (and less labour intensive) solution!!

http://www.isaaa.org... (June2010).pdf



Mike

[tsmith7858]

What exactly is a "vision" system ? Some kind of robot eye ? (presumably a feminine one )

Rgds / Charles.C

"Vision Systems" are typically a multi camera set up that can be programmed to detect abnormalties. We used them in bottle making and they could pick out a variety of things including shape and size of the bottle (out of round, short/long, etc) as well as imperfections such as dirt or oil.

They are also heavily used in my former industry of wood working for "optimizing saws". The cameras would view the board and then "optimize" a cut around the defects based on pre determined cut sizes.

They come in all shapes and sizes and as GMO eluded to, they are not always that successful.

[Charles.C]

Dear All,

Intriguing thread.

It would appear that x-ray machines cannot detect insect bones. I imagine they are not so different to human ones (no idea ). Too small perhaps ? They are certainly used successfully to detect fish bones in large frozen blocks of fish fillet.

@Tsmith – many thks for the education. I suspect a lot of money is involved.
@ Mike Green, thks for yr contributions (in case omitted, Welcome to the Forum! 1 yr back). Yr comment is clearly the most direct solution if considered acceptable to the regulators / processor / environment / final user.

Rgds / Charles.C

[lenga]

I guess its the old enemy of the aubergine eater- the FSB (fruit and shoot borer)- over 70% crop loss has been recorded due to this pest

i think the problem needs to be dealt with by the supplier/grower- traditionally this has been with massive amounts of insecticide and/or 100% inspection( for 'bore holes')- alternatively there is an fsb resistant eggplant 'in development' for an environmentally friendly (and less labour intensive) solution!!

Mike

I agreed with you. Can you tell me more about FSB resistant eggplants.
Thanks

[GMO]

I was going to suggest inspection. Great minds think alike. I suspect there is no easy answer apart from insecticide which might not be popular with your customers. I suppose which would be less popular? The insecticide or the insects? I was amused to hear someone complaining their organic cauliflower was infested with aphids recently. I did think "well what do you expect???"

[Mike Green]

I agreed with you. Can you tell me more about FSB resistant eggplants.
Thanks

Hi- sorry tried to post a link last time-but it didn't work- fingerscrossed for the ones below!

My link

My link


My link

Mike

[Gao Yu Qing]

Dear All,

Intriguing thread.

It would appear that x-ray machines cannot detect insect bones. I imagine they are not so different to human ones (no idea ). Too small perhaps ? They are certainly used successfully to detect fish bones in large frozen blocks of fish fillet.

@Tsmith – many thks for the education. I suspect a lot of money is involved.
@ Mike Green, thks for yr contributions (in case omitted, Welcome to the Forum! 1 yr back). Yr comment is clearly the most direct solution if considered acceptable to the regulators / processor / environment / final user.

Rgds / Charles.C

Insects don't have bones. They have exoskeletons made of chiton, a material that's close to that of your fingernails or hair. Hearing that this insect is inside the plant makes me think that it's probably a larval form, meaning it's like a maggot and would be very soft, with only a thin flexible layer of exoskeleton. There would be nothing of sufficient density to reflect the x-rays.

Reminds me of the people who found a frozen frog in their veggies this past week or so. But as someone else mentioned, if there's an infestation problem, the onus lies on the grower to get it under control. Visual inspection for bore holes is really the only way you're going to find these critters.

[Charles.C]

Dear Gao Yu Qing,

Thks yr assist. I remember now, vertebrates and the others.

Certainly seems that commercial X-ray systems have not got so far on this one despite massive interest via the wheat industry, a review (2008) here –

 x-ray detection contaminants in food industry 2008.pdf   367.72KB   14 downloads

For the benefit of anyone (still) interested in X-ray, this link seemed quite informative -
http://www.foodengin...000000000691953

Plus, some indications of (presumably research) projects getting somewhere, see below –

1.

Karunakaran, C. Jayas, D.S. White, N.D.G. This paper appears in: Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2002. IEEE CCECE 2002. Canadian Conference on
Issue Date: 2002 ,Volume: 2 ,On page(s): 902 - 907 vol.2

Abstract
The Canada Grain Act imposes a zero tolerance for stored-product insects in grain. Incoming and export grain in the primary and terminal elevators, respectively is inspected for the presence of insects using Berlese funnels. This method takes 5 to 6 h to extract the larval stages of the rusty grain beetle, Cryptolestes ferrugineus (Stephens), the most common stored-grain insect in Canada. During this time the grain may have been binned in the elevator or loaded on to ships. This results in manifestation of infestation and cross contamination of stored-grain in the grain handling system. The feasibility of using real-time soft X-ray images to detect insect infestations in wheat was determined in this study. Uninfested and infested Canadian Western Red Spring wheat kernels fed on by different life stages of C. ferrugineus were X-rayed at 15 kV potential and 65 μA current. Five hundred uninfested and 440 infested kernels were X-rayed at different times for the four larval instars, pupae, and adult stages of the insect infesting wheat kernels. Histogram groups, histogram and shape moments, and textural features using co-occurrence and run length matrices were extracted from the X-ray images. The 57 extracted features were used to identify uninfested and infested kernels by the non-parametric classifier and multi-layer feed-forward backpropagation neural network (BPNN). The non-parametric classifier correctly identified 83.3% of the sound kernels. The BPNN identified 75.7% of sound kernels and classed 24.3% as infested. More than 87% of wheat kernels infested by larvae were identified as infested by the nonparametric classifier and BPNN. More than 96% of kernels infested by the pupal and adult stages of C. ferrugineus were correctly classified by the nonparametric classifier and BPNN methods.

2.

Journal of Stored Products Research, Volume 38, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 75-86
A comparison of screening methods for insect contamination in wheat
Bob Brader , , a, Rachel C. Leea, Rudy Plarre1, , b, Wendell Burkholderb, G. Barrie Kittoc, Chuan Kao2, , d, Lynn Polstond, Eleanora Dorneanu3, , e, Ioana Szabof, Bill Meadg, Bob Rouseh, Don Sullinsh and Royal Denningi

Abstract
In collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture and a number of major milling companies, the “Insect-Detect” immunoassay for analyzing insect contamination in grains has been compared with three more traditional methods, X-ray analysis, cracking and flotation, and the insect fragment test (IFT). Testing was carried out in blind fashion using clean wheat samples that were spiked with differing numbers of grain kernels infested with late instar larvae of the granary weevil (Sitophilus granarius (L.)). Three different laboratories analyzed the samples for each of the four methods. The collaborative trials showed that the insect immunoassay clearly provided the most accurate measurement of actual insect infestation, followed by X-ray analysis. While both cracking and flotation and IFT procedures provided a general measure of contamination, they showed much greater variability
(I guess, as described here, the last one is primarily an analytical tool rather than a screening system, despite the title)

This link is perhaps an estimate of the (human) problem magnitude –

http://www.ggbzw.com...t_knowing.shtml
(truly amazing website! )

Rgds / Charles.C

PS thanks Mike for the "link". Impressive but does seem to be a work in progress at the moment? Somewhat unusual scoped thank you plug on 1st page pdf also

[Mike Green]

PS thanks Mike for the "link". Impressive but does seem to be a work in progress at the moment? Somewhat unusual scoped thank you plug on 1st page pdf also

Hi yes- a work in progress- as far as i can tell- not in so much that it doesn't work-or can't be produced-just that they have to be sure that the genetically modified eggplant can't cross pollinate with the non gm ones-before unleashing it on the world!

I think the previous links lacked a certain amount of variety(!)- here is a better one!
My link

Mike

[Charles.C]

Dear Mike,

Nice link!

The text seemed pretty sure everything was a win-win-win situation (slightly disturbing).

Didn’t see any mention when this particular application of Bt started or (anticipated) minimum time before “unleashing”. I presume it takes a considerable time to validate the environment / consumer in such cases.

Rgds / Charles.C

[Mike Green]

Dear Mike,

Nice link!

The text seemed pretty sure everything was a win-win-win situation (slightly disturbing).

Didn’t see any mention when this particular application of Bt started or (anticipated) minimum time before “unleashing”. I presume it takes a considerable time to validate the environment / consumer in such cases.

Rgds / Charles.C

Hi Charles,

I think its more..... win-win-slight possibility of disaster!

of course they're gonna sell it as 'the only answer'-but coming from a background of up to 70% crop loss- and a history of inaffective controls (nets/ crop rotation/ 'pheromone traps' etc) to be honest it probably is!- but they have to try to anticipate every possible future problem-as the anti gm squad will jump on any failure anywhere as a reason never to do it again ever anywhere-and that would be a shame as despite the negative press there is a lot of good that can come out of it

I have emailed one of the project team to see if they have a timescale(shy bairns get nowt!!)- no answer yet- but i will update this if/when it arrives
Regards
mike

[vinegar]

I have used metal detection in Potato Chip production. It would pickout whole potatoes and a whole lot of other items such as machine parts and it could even tell if the box had the right amunt of product. Safeline has a very good metal detection give them a call and talk with them about your needs.

[Jim E.]

Old post I know, but I have some time on my hands to review some older posts. We have a piece of equipment that works on density to remove foreign material, produced by a company called "Raytec", out of Europe. Now it can pick out material that is not the same density as the vegatable that we are using in production, rock, wood , plastic, bone, rubber, animal parts, etc. But it is only capable to a certian size, not sure how big your bug is and whether or not this sort of equipment would work or be capable? But just thought I would throw this out.

Jim