Frutic Chile 2009 - 8th International Symposium - Information and Technology for Sustainable Fruit and Vegetable Production

Dear colleagues:

We are pleased to invite you to Concepcion, Chile for "Frutic Chile 2009,” the 8th edition of the Information and Technology Syposium for Sustainable Fruit and Vegetable Production."

Today’s international markets continually demand higher quality standards. Therefore, countries that export fruits, wines, and vegetables must realize the need to meet consumer demands and particularly supply their needs each day with information about the product data, especially produce origin, quality, and health. However, in the majority of cases in the agricultural world, they don’t count on the necessary tools to address this problem. Even worse, they haven’t taken notice of these needs and their implications in the short term. Additionally, international competitiveness, which gradually decreases the market objective, is creating the need in fruit and vegetable production to introduce a modernization process aiming to improve the yield efficiency and management of enterprises, such as technological tools, which have allowed the development of the knowledge of spatial and temporal variances that increase the development of quality, profitability, and environmental friendliness. However, we should continue to advance according to the demand of the globalization process with which we’re living today. Therefore, we suggest four important challenges according to the development of innovations associated with the scientific enterprise world dedicated to the production of fruit and vegetable as outlined below:

Consumer's new necessities:

Expansion of globalization has permitted an increment in the supply of products, which results in a level of consumer reaction requiring higher quality (highly changeable) and healthy products that lead to worldwide producers with a more effective and efficient production system of a higher scale to be more commercially competitive under these new standards. This generates a greater need to develop modern production systems using high technology at a field level, including storage and transportation to avoid deterioration in product (wine, fruit, olive oil, etc.) quality.

Necessities of production circle:

The modernization process of the production of fruit, wine and vegetables has created the need for certifications in production systems (EUREPGAP, ISO 14000, etc.) However, there’s an increasing need for consumers and intermediate users (food industry) to count on more reliable systems in the commercial chain (traceability, e-trading…) and digital data format management. The handling of resulting large data, geographic management systems, etc, will be critical in the management, authentication, use and introduction of information and communication technologies.

Healthy food production:

The advancement in medicine and biotechnology has allowed for the awareness of factors in food that are highly sensitive at the consumer level, and this has resulted in healthier agriculture processes, which consumers are willing to pay for. Furthermore, we must address issues regarding globalization processes and commercial agreements among countries or economic blocks that have created higher standards for the development of healthy food through certifications, international regulations, etc. By using applied technology to reduce the amount of agrochemicals (such as pesticides and mineral fertilize) in primary production as well as post-harvest is not only a requirement but also a duty for the future sustainable development of our countries. In this way, the development of technological tools associated with agricultural management is key to the reduction of production costs.

Agriculture mechanization and automatization:

At an international level, a decrease in the income-yield capacity of agricultural fruit and vegetable products can be explained by an increment in the supply associated with greater competition, driving a greater need for reduction of the input costs without damaging product quality. Further, there is an increment in labor input generating the continual need for research and development of more modern automated equipment that allows work to be completed with more accuracy at a lower cost. In this respect, future robotics are envisioned as an attractive alternative, a science that is already widely used today in industries such as automotive and mining. Also, there is a clear tendency to develop intelligent machinery that permits improved labor for operators to work with high efficiency, resulting in better products at an acceptable cost.
All these challenges will be addressed by applying advances in technology and information areas to the agricultural world, in order to make it sustainable and will be the focus of the coming symposium.

Looking forward to seeing you in Concepción

On behalf of organization committee

Leopoldo Sánchez (INIA)

Stanley Best (INIA)

Gabriel Selles (INIA)

Andrés Viveros (CORFO-Innova Bío Bío)

Emilio Ruz (PROCISUR)

Gonzalo González (IICA)

Samuel Ortega (Universidad de Talca, Chile)

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