Recommendation System for Improvement in Post

Harvesting of Horticulture Crops

Kinjal Ajudiya ✉ , Amit Thakkar, and Kamlesh Makwana

( )

Department of Information Technology, Charotar University of Science and Technology,

Changa, Gujarat, India
kinjalajudiya@gmail.com,
{Amitthakkar.it,kamleshmakwana.it}@charusat.ac.in

Abstract. Horticulture includes tropical and subtropical fruits, vegetables,

spices, flowers, medicinal and aromatic plants. Horticulture sector is a major
growth of Indian Agriculture. India is second largest producer of fruits and vege‐
tables in the world. But the post-harvest loss is because of weak supply chain
entities like storage facilities, bad transportation facility, market facility, and not
proper packaging, not use of modern techniques, not proper post-harvest manage‐
ment. Due to post harvest loss actual need of fruits does not satisfy and so that
need to import the fruit from outside the country. If import of fruit is higher than
the export then it will impact on balance of payment of India, value goes negative.
Post-harvest loss indirectly affect on our Indian Economy. By using modern
technologies post-harvest loss can be reduced. For example, Geographic Infor‐
mation System (GIS) can be used for analysis of spatial data and helps also in
decision making in problem. Location based recommendation system will also
help to recommend the location of cold storages and establishment of new cold
storages.

Keywords: Geographic information system · Recommendation system · Post-

harvest management · Markets · Cold storages

1 Introduction

Horticulture is a branch of Agriculture includes fruits, vegetables, spices, flowers and

medicinal and aromatic plants. Horticulture sector is a major driver growth of Indian
Agriculture. In 1991–92, the total land under horticultural crops was reported to be 12.77
million hectares, in 2012–13 total area occupied by horticulture crop is 23.69 million
hectares and total production is 268.8 Million Tones an increase of 85% [10]. Huge
amount variety of production in India like fruits, vegetables, flowers, aromatic crops is
because India is endowed with heterogeneous area and characterized by a great diversity
of agro climatic zones. Post harvest stage is the stage of crop production followed by
the harvest determines the final quality as crop can be sold as a fresh consumption or it
can be used as a ingredient in a processed food product. Crop is removed from its parent
plant, it started to deteriorate. Post harvest handling is required at this stage. Post harvest

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018

S.C. Satapathy and A. Joshi (eds.), Information and Communication
Technology for Intelligent Systems (ICTIS 2017) - Volume 2, Smart Innovation,
Systems and Technologies 84, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-63645-0_61
 Recommendation System for Improvement in Post Harvesting 547

loss is the reason for importing fruits and vegetables from outside the country which
affects on Indian Economy. Post harvest loss is because of either weak supply network
chain entities or not proper post harvesting management. For example bad road
networks, not proper packaging of fruits, not storage facilities, not processing units these
all are the reasons of post harvest loss and indirectly decrease the quality of horticulture
product. At last when fruit and vegetable reaches at consumer level then quality is
deteriorate.

2 Literature Survey

The production of banana is third rank in all over the world. Banana is well suited for
agriculture reason for it is that it requires little requirements with respect to other fruits.
Requirements are like land preparation, care, maintenance. Then also it results into high
yield per given area and time. Due to poor management of post harvesting of fruits and
vegetables customer get the poor quality of fruits and vegetables. India is developing
country facing problem of highest post harvest loss then also very little or no emphasis
is given to the handling of this type of perishable fruits [2]. So that quality of fruits is
reduced. Post harvest loss can be reduced by improving post harvesting techniques. Best
technique for post harvesting management is low temperature handling and storage [2].
Mango is the major tropical and most perishable fruit grows worldwide. Highest post
harvest loss in mango is due to its perishable nature. Problem identify of post harvest
loss in paper is weak supply chain network entities like cold storages, market outlets,
mandis, transportation units. By making improvement in all these entities problem of
post harvest loss can be reduced. Technique used to solve this issue is use of geographic
information system. In this paper study deals with the scientific creation of the database
and that database is given as a input to the geographic information system (GIS) and
certain steps to be followed to enhance the efficiency of supply chain network entity of
mango.
Paper [1] shows that highest post harvest loss from all fruits and vegetable is in
tomato in Sub Saharan Africa. Rough handling, warm storage temperature are the reason
for post harvest loss of tomato. In developing country post harvest loss is started at pre-
consumer level because of some limits at the time of harvesting like financial and tech‐
nical limits, storage limits, packaging and marketing limitations. Paper highlights the
challenges which faces during the fresh supply chain of tomato in Africa and identify
solution for improving post harvesting handling by improvement in storage and
marketing facilities. Lack of transport infrastructure for marginal farmers results in poor
quality of tomato. By improving all these supply chain entities and using modern tech‐
nology problem can be solved.
Paper [11] shows that highest loss in pineapple production is because of post
harvesting and it is near about 24%. Transportation, storage facility, cultivated area,
number of bruised fruits are the reason. But by applying suitable post harvest reducing
technique the shelf life of pineapple can be increase.
548 K. Ajudiya et al.

2.1 Major Findings from Literature Survey

2.1.1 Challenges
Although second largest country in the production of the fruit, the fresh fruits export
from India is very less because of some specific constraints [4]. These constraints involve
issues related to supply chain entities, market outlets access, transportation facilities,
post harvesting technologies. The amount of wastage of fruits and vegetables because
of improper handling, storage facilities, transportation is 40% [3]. From 40% loss 6%
loss is because of not proper storage facilities are available and in our country traditional
structures are followed by small farmers [5]. Share of India in global export of fruit is
only less than 5% [4].
The post harvest losses affect not only the reduction amount of fruits but it also
increase per unit cost of transportation and marketing. This affects both to the producers
as reduction in share in consumer’s price and to the consumers as low availability and
high prices [9].

2.1.2 Factors Affecting the Post Harvest Loss

In horticulture some fruits are perishable in nature and transportation of that type of
yield with the road network will hamper the quality of the fruits caused the textural
damages because of irregular or bad road network [3].
Unavailability of proper infrastructure like storage facilities for fruits and vegetables,
bad road networks in some region or no road network from orchard to market or cold
storage in some hilly areas, lack of proper post harvesting instruments, hygienic pack‐
aging will also lead to major deterioration in fruits and vegetables.

3 Recommendation System

Implementation of advance post harvesting technological approaches will reduce the

post harvest loss in horticulture products as well as improve the per capita productivity.
Handling at various stages of post harvest loss will help in identifying the main reason
of loss. After knowing reason proper measures are required at different stages and post
harvest loss can be reduced using proper technology and indirectly increase the economy
of our country.
Geographic Information System (GIS) is a computer assisted system for analysis of
spatial data. Analysis like network analysis, proximity analysis, buffer analysis, location
allocation analysis, database query, overlay analysis can be performed with the use of
GIS. GIS can also be used in crop modeling and decision support system.
Remote sensing is a technique of getting information about any entities without any
physical contact. Remote sensing can be done using cameras, sensors. Remote sensing
is also widely used in agriculture.
Develop a very accurate and standard inventory system for horticulture will help in
to reduce post harvest loss. Recommendation system one type of filtering system will
recommend the items to the user. In horticulture recommendation system will use in
different prospect. Generally recommendation system is used because information is
 Recommendation System for Improvement in Post Harvesting 549

overloaded because of huge amount of data is generated. Here not huge amount of data
is generated but recommendation system will help to recommend the location of the
market or storage facilities like cold storage from orchard places via shortest path as
many cold storages are available. Before recommending the location of facility some
analysis should be performed on the data.
Decision support system is a one type of intelligent system which helps users to take
decision by covering all the aspects of problem. Specifically when there are lots of
choices available to user and user have to select one of them then decision support system
will help the user. For development of decision support system recommendation system
is required.

3.1 System Overview

This section introduce steps to be followed for recommending the location of supply
chain entities like markets, mandis, cold storages from orchard (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Flow chart of the methodology

Data Collection: Location information like latitude and longitude of some place can
be getting from the Geographical Positioning System (GPS). The Administrative boun‐
daries and road network map of district can be collected from government. Some stat‐
istical data can be collected from horticulture department. To get information about
transportation, production about particular region questionnaire survey is conducted
with the local farmers.
Data can be of two types: 1. Vector data 2. Raster data
Vector data is used to show the road network, railway network, administrative boun‐
dary. Raster data is used to represent entities like digital elevation model, building blocks
(Fig. 2).
550 K. Ajudiya et al.

Fig. 2. Data of building blocks

Preprocessing of Different Layers: From the statistics the layers are created which
have geographic information attached to it because it is also known as a geo spatial layer.
Input is the attributes of table data from previous layer (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Administrative boundary

Analysis Using GIS: GIS is used to reduce the complexity of the management [6].
Different layers are created in above step is consider as a input to the GIS.
1. Overlay analysis: The layers of cold storages and road network are overlaid on each
other. This layer is overlaid on the market layer. The resulted layer shows the spatial
pattern. E.g. which road is passing near to the market? (Fig. 4)
 Recommendation System for Improvement in Post Harvesting 551

Fig. 4. Overlay analysis of two shape files

2. Network analysis: Network analysis will show the road network through which
yield can be transported from the production field to storage place or market in terms
of reduce the time. It means network analysis will show the shortest path from
growing field to the storage or processing units.
First road network of any region is uploaded and then for network analysis algorithms
like shortest path algorithm for example Dijikstra’s algorithm, A-star algorithm can
be used. Location of storage entity is fixed as a destination but source is selected by
clicking on orchard (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5. Road network using shortest path analysis

3. Proximity analysis: This type of analysis will find the proximity of road network
near to the markets, processing units. Thus minimize the transportation loss [7].
552 K. Ajudiya et al.

Location Allocation Analysis: In this analysis the places is found out where new cold
storage can be establish. Based on location best suited and least suited places decided
using this analysis.
There is huge amount of geo reference data say for example cold storages are avail‐
able but users are only interested in nearby location [12].

4 Conclusion

This paper shows the reason for post harvest loss in horticulture. Modern technologies
can improve the production by reducing the post harvest loss. Technology like
Geographic Information System and Recommendation System is used for the purpose
of analysis and establishing the location of new physical entities. Mostly post harvest
loss is because of not sufficient amount of storage facility, bad road networks, lack of
post harvest instruments. India is developing country and small farmer uses the tradi‐
tional technique to store their product is also one reason for post harvest loss. By using
GIS various types of analysis can be performed and it will help in finding shortest path,
availability of road network near to the physical entities. By applying all these tech‐
nology post harvest loss can be reduced easily.

5 Future Work

Research can be continued to develop a decision support system which help the farmers
to show the location of nearest cold storages or markets facilities with dynamic data
availability. If market or cold storage capacity is less than farmer’s production then
suggest another best suitable cold storage. Real time weather data can also be attached
with the application so that in case of natural hazards application will automatic show
the path which is safe based on weather condition.

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