Development of image processing techniques for classification and grading of bananas

Abstract

Agriculture is the backbone of a nation s economy as the source of livelihood, contribution to the national revenue, source of raw material, significance to the international trade, foreign exchange resources and great employment opportunities. Agricultural sector contributes around 18% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Agro industries process various agricultural produce like fruits/vegetables and generates revenue. Fruits are cultivated in large amount for both domestic and export purposes. Bananas (Musa species) are the staple fruits named as Kalpatharu that serves as the livelihood of people across the world. India is the leading producer of bananas with a production of 29 million tonnes per year. Recent reports tabled by National Horticultural Board (NHB), National Research Centre for Banana (NRCB), India and agency like RNCOS, etc. state that Indian banana processing industry is emerging and present ample opportunities to reach world market. Even though, India is the major cultivator of banana, its contribution to international trade is considerably less. The success and sustainability of Indian banana processing industries relies on the ability to meet the competition in terms of quality and price, of which the quality of the produce is the key. There is a significant amount of loss due to improper post-harvest management practices in these industries, which in turn leads to huge economic loss. Post production losses of banana can be reduced by adopting various post-harvest management practices like cleaning, delatexing, washing, sorting/grading, packaging and ripening. In the current scenario of these industries, manual procedures are followed to do washing, cleaning, sorting and grading. newline