Hortifrut uses AI to Determine the Freshness of Blueberries

Who doesn’t love sweet, delicious blueberries?

Providing a steady supply of beautiful, tasty berries to the market is no small effort and Hortifrut, based in Chile, has been growing and distributing berries for the last 30 years. Today, they are using AI to provide fresh berries to the world everyday.

Hortifrut, the largest global producer and distributor of blueberries requires a large worldwide network of farms and a flexible and reliable supply chain that can deliver fresh berries all year. As both the grower and the supplier, Hortifrut wanted to better understand how to deliver the highest quality of fruit at the final destination. In other words, prior to shipping, Hortifrut wanted to predict freshness or spoilage upon receipt at the final destination. They wanted to save on shipping costs and resulting claims if models predicted that the fruit based on a set of variables including the varietal, the weather, the shipping container, the method of shipping, etc determined that the quality was poor upon arrival.

By using H2O Driverless AI, the data scientists at Hortifrut devised ways to predict product yield upon delivery using data about the berry combined with shipment method and time. “Data about the specific varietal and field that produced it are important to understanding how the berries will fair in transit,” explains Wei Shao, data scientist, Hortifrut.

“We are building hundreds of models to ensure a quality product arrives at its destination. H2O Driverless AI is and will be instrumental in saving Hortifrut time and costs associated with growing and shipping quality blueberries to all points of the world,” explains Gonzalo Bustos, head of data analytics at Hortifrut. “We are getting great results with H2O Driverless AI. What once took us 3 to 5 months using traditional data science methods, can now be done in 3 to 5 weeks without having to add any additional data scientists to the team.”

Specifically, Hortifrut uses Driverless AI to be able to scale their data science efforts and improve their ability to predict the quality of blueberries based on information such as variety, farm origin, packaging, shipping time and vessel. Hortifrut is also using Driverless AI to predict future production of the blueberries dependent on the origin, weather, variety, and more.

Who knew that sweet juicy blueberry you had for breakfast is the result of data scientists at a Chilean company using AI to predict the quality and best delivery of their fruit. This is just one example of how Driverless AI is helping to improve business outcomes. Better blueberries mean better business.