BACKGROUND: In India, raw peanuts are obtained by aggregators from smallholder farms in the form of whole pods and the price is based on a manual estimation of basic peanut pod and kernel characteristics. These methods of raw produce evaluation are slow and can result in procurement irregularities. The procurement delays combined with the lack of storage facilities lead to fungal contaminations and pose a serious threat to food safety in many regions. To address this gap, we investigated whether X-ray technology could be used for the rapid assessment of the key peanut qualities that are important for price estimation. RESULTS: We generated 1752 individual peanut pod 2D X-ray projections using a computed tomography (CT) system (CTportable160.90). Out of these projections we predicted the kernel weight and shell weight, which are important indicators of the produce price. Two methods for the feature prediction were tested: (i) X-ray image transformation (XRT) and (ii) a trained convolutional neural network (CNN). The prediction power of these methods was tested against the gravimetric measurements of kernel weight and shell weight in diverse peanut pod varieties1. Both methods predicted the kernel mass with R2 > 0.93 (XRT: R2 = 0.93 and mean error estimate (MAE) = 0.17, CNN: R2 = 0.95 and MAE = 0.14). While the shell weight was predicted more accurately by CNN (R2 = 0.91, MAE = 0.09) compared to XRT (R2 = 0.78; MAE = 0.08). CONCLUSION: Our study demonstrated that the X-ray based system is a relevant technology option for the estimation of key peanut produce indicators (Figure 1). The obtained results justify further research to adapt the existing X-ray system for the rapid, accurate and objective peanut procurement process. Fast and accurate estimates of produce value are a necessary pre-requisite to avoid post-harvest losses due to fungal contamination and, at the same time, allow the fair payment to farmers. Additionally, the same technology could also assist crop improvement programs in selecting and developing peanut cultivars with enhanced economic value in a high-throughput manner by skipping the shelling of the pods completely. This study demonstrated the technical feasibility of the approach and is a first step to realize a technology-driven peanut production system transformation of the future.

Crops Physiology and Modeling Accelerated Crop Improvement Research Theme International Crops Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics Hyderabad 502324 Telangana India

Department of Information Technologies Faculty of Economics and Management Czech University of Life Sciences Prague Kamýcká 129 Prague 165 00 Czech Republic

Development Center for 10 Ray Technology Flugplatzstraße 75 90768 Fürth Germany

Universität Osnabrück 49069 Osnabrück Germany

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