A life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed for fresh apples exported from Japan to Taiwan to identify hotspots along the supply chain. We further explore how to minimize the environmental impact of the post-harvest chain to mitigate the carbon footprint of the apple chain. Within the climate change impact category, the hotspots were cultivation and truck transport with cooling in Japan. Based on the hotspots, introducing a modal shift in Japanese domestic transportation and changing to a port closer to the farm for ship distribution would decrease the climate change impact by 13-22 % relative to the base case. This study provided essential insights for the development of a more environmentally friendly apple distribution process from Japan to Taiwan.

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Edible film is a novel concept in the packaged food industry. It is used to extend the shelf life of food. This study aimed to compare levan production from Bacillus siamensis using a flask and bioreactor, characterize its properties, and evaluate the properties of levan alginate-based film coating by applying it on guava. The water vapor permeability (WVP) of the films and weight loss of the coated guava were measured. The results revealed that the performance of the bioreactor was similar to flask cultivation. Levan exhibited prebiotic activity and promoted the growth of Lacticaseibacillus casei. The WVP of the film comprising purified levan was 6.02 × 10^-8 g m^-1 s-¹ Pa^-1. Coated guava demonstrated reduced weight loss by up to 49.35 %.

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A phenotyping system was developed for monitoring the growth of 3 Japanese and 5 European varieties of potatoes. From the UAV images taken weekly, plant height, volume and vegetation indices were estimated from the DSM and the reflectance maps. UAV-estimated volume and manually measured plant height had a high correlation with a coefficient of determination R² of 0.70. UAV estimated NDVI was highly correlated with the manually measured NDVI (correlation coefficient of R = 0.97). European varieties such as Euroviva had a higher volume compared to the Japanese varieties such as Irish cobbler and Toyoshiro. Volume and LCI were found to be highly correlated with the yield ( R² of 0.99 and 0.96) thus ideal parameters for yield prediction.

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Terracing allows cultivation even in hilly regions but does not permit the use of conventional heavy machinery. Olive trees, grown on terraced lands, are harvested with a handheld long-shafted harvester that shakes the branches of the trees and makes olives fall over nets arranged around the trees. This relatively heavy and unbalanced hand-hold tool causes fatigue and articular-muscular disease to the operators. This paper presents a lightweight exoskeleton developed to help in the carrying and operating of such tools, reducing human effort and the incidence of long-term pathologies to the operators. This work describes the kinematics and design of the proposed exoskeleton, which is passive and “minimal”. A prototype of the exoskeleton has been produced and tested in the field.

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