NIRS in the contemporary world for food and agriculture

With the outbreak of Covid-19, this global pandemic has posed significant problems in various industries. Food safety being one of them places challenges in many areas such as, agriculture and food production, food retail, public health, and supply chain. Under the pandemic circumstance, food safety concerns have risen in the market in an unprecedented way. This could stimulate new business that meets the demand of portable near-infrared (NIR) devices and imaging technologies. In the coming years, it is critical to build the vision not only on the platforms of collecting data but also on how to take advantages of the predictive analytics to get ahead. From the NIR instrumentation manufacture stand of point, one thing is to keep improving the quality of spectral/imaging data by enhancing the hardware, and the other is to incorporate user interface into customer’s data automation system, data pipeline, and their cloud computing database. The automation system will maximize operation efficiency, simplify data management and sharing, and generate analytical reporting. It helps customers to reduce human errors, acquire clean data to influence decision making in a timely manner, and increase the chances of creating values and customer loyalty. In addition, with in-line NIR generating so much real-time data during production monitoring process, it provides opportunities for large data processing for making data-driven business strategies. With the economic growth slowing down, and the developments of trade wars, shifting of regulatory, the market of NIR applications will be impacted on both local and global levels. On the other hand, the NIR business could leverage this opportunity, for example, to convert stand-alone instruments to the digital network solution plan for the recovery ahead, where the benefits are clearly shown in this pandemic.