Development of an Intelligent Evaporative Cooling System for Post-harvest Storage of Tomato

Abstract

This research developed an intelligent evaporative cooling system for post-harvest tomato preservation that adapts to its suitable temperature, humidity, and CO2 states to store, preserve quality, and increase the shelf life of the fruits. This was accomplished through the use of transfer learning for fruit classification, the Internet of Things (IoT) for remote monitoring and shelf life tracking, and the integration of the evaporative cooling system with a CO2 sensor, a temperature sensor, a humidity sensor, an Arduino Uno, and a Raspberry Pi 4b. The system can classify tomato fruit status as ripe or overripe with a prediction accuracy of 87.5% and a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) value of 88.89%. The developed evaporative cooling system extended the shelf life of ripe tomatoes from 5 to 14-17 days at 20℃ and 90% relative humidity and overripe tomatoes from 3 to 9-11 days at 18℃ and 95% relative humidity. These results emphasize the crucial function of evaporative cooling in fruit and vegetable storage, as it extends the shelf life of tomatoes by 180–200%, hence minimizing post-harvest loss as it also increases the farmers’ income, thereby contributing positively to the economy.