Tomra previews LUCAi at Fruitnet Citrus Congress

Tomra Food gave the first public demonstration of its new LUCAi deep learning technology for citrus at Fruitnet Citrus Congress in Valencia on 25-26 March.

Now available for lemons, mandarins and oranges, Tomra revealed that the technology had demonstrated a more than 99 per cent accuracy rate for difficult defects like rot, sunburn, clipper cut, long stem and doubles.

“For these particular defects, LUCAi outperforms even Tomra’s well-received traditional mapping models,” said Dr Christopher Johnston, head of applications engineering at Tomra Food, speaking at the congress. “The issue for traditional mapping of any type – whether Tomra’s or a competitor’s — is that it focuses solely on a few pixels that show the suspected defect. This makes it harder to achieve accuracy with classification and grading in difficult defects, like clipper cut, because it doesn’t appreciate the wider context of the fruit.”

David del Castillo, regional sales director for southern Europe, commented: “LUCAi is already delivering a step-change in both performance and usability for other segments, with over 900 total lanes already sold for apples, cherries and now citrus. I’m delighted to reaffirm Tomra’s commitment to the citrus industry with the launch of this product.”

From blues to oranges

Initially launched for blueberries in 2018, LUCAi is now enabling even greater precision in detecting and grading citrus defects.

“We’ve already seen remarkable results for Spectrim with LUCAi in apples and cherries, and now we’re expanding to support lemon, mandarin and orange applications,” said Johnston.

“Spectrim began with traditional algorithms to improve grading. Adding the shallow machine learning tools of SmartSkin and SmartMap brought additional improvements to Spectrim’s grading performance. Now, with LUCAi Deep Learning, Spectrim continues to improve. LUCAi has not only increased our accuracy on grading for the defects we already lead the industry in; it is also allowing us to detect defects which were a challenge previously.”

LUCAi Citrus is being trialed in all citrus-growing regions in both hemispheres, Tomra said, including units already operational in Spain, the US and Australia, and additional installations underway in Italy and South Africa.

On the second day of Fruitnet Citrus Congress, Tomra Food hosted a site visit to Serifruit, which uses LUCAi to drive performance improvements in its orange and clementine grading lines.

“Attendees were impressed with the ease of use of LUCAi and the set-up and easy maintenance of the Tomra 5S Advanced,” Tomra said.

Del Castillo commented: “Citrus growers and packers need more efficient, precise and user-friendly sorting and classification systems and, with the wide variety of citrus fruits and the numerous varieties within each type, LUCAi Citrus is set to play a pivotal role and redefine the way they work.”

Tomra Food’s Valencia headquarters, established in 2023, further supports its ongoing commitment to the citrus industry, the company said.

“Our regional structure and state-of-the-art Tomra Food Center in Valencia allow us to respond quickly to our customers’ needs and provide unparalleled technical and service support,” added Del Castillo. “The positive feedback we’ve received from the industry reinforces our belief that Tomra’s solutions are well-positioned to meet the future demands of citrus processors.”