Smart Agriculture harvesting sustainable crops
In January 2015 Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) began its Internet of Tomatoes project, using technologies such as micro-electromechanical systems and sensors to detect whether environmental monitoring can improve the flavour of tomatoes. ADI, along with its agricultural partners, is aiming to develop a chemistry profile of an ideal tomato, with the ultimate goal to develop a kit for farmers to use, complete with temperature and humidity sensors as well as components adept for further data gathering and tomato-scanning.

ADI, along with its farm partners, is working toward developing a chemistry profile that helps identify what elements make the tomatoes juicy and delicious. “We’re building a database around it to measure the quality of the tomato—not just individual items, but the taste profile,” O’Reilly says.

These measurements have revealed that the chemistry of New England tomatoes differs from their tastier counterparts from other parts of the world. They don’t have high fructose, glucose, or salt content—which is why when most people grab a New England–grown tomato, they also grab a salt shaker. “When you compare them to an Italian tomato, they’re not even close,” O’Reilly says, noting that from an aesthetic perspective, the New England tomatoes look like any other. But on the inside, the chemistry doesn’t match up, according to ADI’s analysis of thousands of tomatoes.

ADI is also seeking a non-invasive way to test tomatoes for their chemistry profiles without destroying the tomatoes. Currently, testers puree and pipette tomatoes into lenses to test for the different elements: fructose, sucrose, glucose, and salinity. ADI also measures the tomatoes’ Brix during testing—that is, their carbohydrate and mineral levels.

In addition to a tomato’s chemistry, its health is also critical. Lycopene is an antioxidant that affects not only the red color of the tomato, but also its quality. ADI’s goal is to look at acids, sugars, nutrients, and other measurable markers with the same technology as that used for tomato testing to assess the health and overall nutritional value of the tomato. “We have a non-destructive optical approach in the works so we don’t have to destroy the tomatoes we want to test,” O’Reilly says. That approach is a “tomato tricorder”—think of a Star Trek–inspired device to scan the tomatoes, using nearfield infrared technology like what is used in night-vision goggles.

Going Beyond Tastier Tomatoes

Although a precision design kit with some components will be released soon, ADI’s ultimate goal is to develop a kit for farmers to use, one that not only contains temperature and humidity sensors but also the components necessary to set up the system for data-gathering and tomato-scanning. Users will access the gateway and cloud via IOS or Android devices. Optical technology will measure the soil, leaf, and stem lengths and their stress levels.

Ultimately, the data collection will help create models to predict growth, bugs, and the all-important question of when to water. “Overwatering and humidity are the source of tomato crops being wiped out,” O’Reilly notes. “Farmers can lose a lot of tomatoes due to white blight mold and bug infestation.”

O’Reilly and his colleagues at ADI are also investigating other problems, including root stress and vapor pressure deficit (the difference between theoretical pressure and the actual pressure from humidity, which causes leaf stress). Mitigating those issues could lead to better-tasting tomatoes. Much of the data is being crowdsourced from the precision-design kit released last winter.