Onion storage disease monitoring using volatile organic compounds

Onion storage diseases cause significant economic losses worldwide ,and £10 to £11m losses in the UK per year alone (Taylor et. al. ,2016; AHDB, 2015),in a UK industry worth £126m (DEFRA).Currently onion growers destructively sample onion stores in making decisions when to empty stores and market the onions. This method is both statistically inaccurate in relation to the size of the store (500 - 1500 tonnes) and often too late before the grower realizes there is a significant disease issue in the onions. Currently there is no non-destructive method of onion disease detection in onion stores which would give early detection of disease. The vision of this project is to develop a practical on site onion disease detection system which would forewarn the grower enabling him to minimize onion waste which otherwise would have been marketed. The main areas of focus would be to use odour or volatile organic compound (VOC) detection to identify differences between a healthy onion crop and one in which disease is present to a level where the grower is required to take action to mitigate onion waste. This project will take the first steps to develop an automatic store monitoring system that gives early warning of crop disease based on the fingerprint of volatile organic compounds given off by the crop. The differences between the VOC's given off by healthy and diseased crops will be detected ,analysed and monitored to give growers a warning when disease has infected the stored crop allowing them to take early intervention to minimize crop waste and so reduce the burden of on farm food waste. This project will be proven initially with onions but the planned solution will also work with Potatoes and other stored crops.