Prof I Wayan Budiastra Develops This Technology to Improve Agricultural Competitiveness in the Export Market
The lengthy laboratory testing process and high cost of quality control for agricultural products often pose obstacles for farmers and exporters in meeting global market standards.
Now, Professor I Wayan Budiastra, a distinguished professor at the Faculty of Agricultural Technology at IPB University, offers a solution by developing several faster and more competitive technologies.
Over the past two decades, Prof Budiastra has developed various non-destructive technologies such as Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIR), ultrasonic technology, and Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS).
“This innovation arose from the need to meet quality demands in the global market, shorten the product quality analysis process time, and reduce costs and chemical use,” said Prof Budiastra during the IPB University Professor Scientific Pre-Lecture Press Conference via Zoom (9/18).
Until now, industries and exporters have relied on chemical quality testing through sampling in laboratories, which takes a long time, up to 1-2 weeks. The cost reaches IDR 200.000-500.000 per sample.
“The development of this technology is designed to be implemented in farmer groups, cooperatives, industries, and exporters,” said Prof Budiastra.
His research focuses on leading export commodities such as mango, mangosteen, coffee, nutmeg, pepper, and oil palm. NIR has been proven capable of predicting sugar and acid content in mangoes, caffeine levels in coffee, and even fat content in palm oil with a high level of accuracy.
In addition, he developed a portable UV-VIS-NIR-based device to accurately determine the ripeness of oil palm fruit directly in the field. “This device can achieve 100 percent accuracy with the help of artificial intelligence based on machine learning,” he said.
Ultrasonic and EIS technologies have also shown great potential in predicting the internal quality of thick-skinned fruits, although they are still in the prototype stage. His latest research is exploring the use of sensors for sorting fresh fruit bunches in the crude palm oil (CPO) industry.
Moreover, his innovations in processing using electromagnetic wave-based methods, such as ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE), can accelerate the extraction of active compounds up to 24 times faster. The Greenhouse Effect (GHE) Dryer has been proven to shorten vanilla curing to just 12 days while maintaining the highest quality.
At the end of his presentation, he expressed hope that these innovations would receive government attention and policy support so that the technology could be mass-produced and implemented in the field. “With the application of this technology, the competitiveness of leading commodities can be enhanced, while simultaneously boosting the income of farmers and small industries,” he concluded. (dr) (IAAS/HRD)
