WA: New tech allows customers to pick sweet melons

AAP General News (Australia)
08-16-2000
WA: New tech allows customers to pick sweet melons

PERTH, Aug 16 AAP - A West Australian farmer has used her melon to commercialise a
high-tech method for testing the sweetness of honey dew and rockmelons.

And Kirsten Stoldt has begun experimenting with using the laser-based sweetness tester
technology for citrus and pineapples.

The technology - which allows a farm or market to guarantee a fruit's sweetness - was
designed by Central Queensland University and Queensland's Department of Primary Industries.

Ms Stoldt won the tender to commercialise the new Near Infra Red Spectroscopy (NIRS)
technology and to establish a market for "sweetness-guaranteed" fruit.

Her Kununurra farm had been involved with another sweetness-testing system, designed
in France, before winning the tender to commercialise the NIRS.

But Ms Stoldt said that the NIRS held the advantage over the French system because
it did not involve puncturing the fruit.

"Last year, 20 per cent of our production was marketed as sweetness guaranteed," she said.

"We saw there was a market for that so when the university put out the tender to commercialise
this technology, we went for it."

Under the new system, each melon is washed, placed on a belt and passed under a non-invasive
laser which measures sugar content, for grading.

Fruit which made the grade was individually bagged so it could be easily identified by customers.

AAP agh/sd mg

KEYWORD: MELONS

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