- Author: Therese Kapaun
This week the packline grader is getting a test run and color check to ensure "what you see is what you get" on the packline output. Five projects are scheduled to use the packline grader between now and the end of the year, with an estimated 458 packline runs. For research purposes, a packline run is all the fruit from one tree run together as one lot. Data from the each tree lot can be analyzed separately. In this photo Senior Agricultural Technician Jose Hernandez places Fukumoto navel oranges by hand onto the grader line, the fruit then passes through the grader, and each piece of fruit is retrieved at the other end to be scrutinized for how well the grader recorded the actual colors on each piece. The grader takes 30 pictures of each piece of fruit as it rotates along the belt, and the data output reports each of ten colors as a percentage of the total.