Visual early warning and prediction of fresh food quality deterioration: Research progress and application in supply chain

Fresh foods are prone to deterioration in complex and variable condition's encountered in supply chains. Currently it is not possible for consumers to intuitively or visually know the quality of fresh food at the time of purchase or subsequent storage prior to consumption which can result in issues of food safety and even wastage. Therefore, it is important to devise technologies to monitor the quality of fresh foods during transportation and marketing as well as to be able to reliably predict its possible deterioration so as to provide visual warning to the stakeholders. In the context of digital and intelligent transformation, some emerging technologies have received more attention. Intelligent packaging and digital twin provide innovative ideas for providing visual feedback concerning product quality. Intelligent packaging, a packaging system for monitoring, displaying and tracing of food quality status in supply chain offers great advantages. Further, digital twin displays great potential to provide reliable and timely quality prediction and risk warning with strong support of blockchain, artificial intelligence and big data analysis. In order to better focus on the development and integration of these emerging technologies to achieve visualization requirements for stability, accuracy and timeliness, this review comprehensively discusses recent research and progress in application of intelligent packaging (indicators, sensors and data carriers) and Industrial 4.0 technologies (blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data analysis and digital twin) by focusing on data acquisition, traceability, processing and visualization in fresh foods supply chain. Moreover, challenges and potential of these technologies are presented. This will better help stakeholders to make optimal decisions throughout the supply chain of fresh foods to meet the challenges of food waste and food safety.