4-6 IAN Photo Fruit

 I don’t know about you, but I sometimes have  trouble telling Granny Smith from MacIntosh, but in a couple of years I’ll be able to take a picture of an apple and not only know it’s type, I’ll be able to know it’s history and home address.  Hi, I’m David Sparks, and the NEC Corporation is developing a photo recognition system that will allow consumers to know more about the origin of what they eat than some of their friends and in-laws. 

Scientists are developing a non-bar code method of fruit identification that will let consumers discern the origins of what they eat.  With the grown local and organic movements getting more and more popular, this could be an inexpensive way for growers to identify their produce and satiate consumer’s appetite and curiosity.    Did you ever ask yourself where the fruit you are about to buy in the supermarket comes from? If yes a new “fruit identification system”, developed by NEC, might be the right solution for you. The technology allows you to identify the origin of a given fruit by taking a picture of it with your phone’s camera. NEC is known for its fingerprint and face recognition technologies and now says it has combined their expertise in these areas to come up with the new system. The photos taken by users are compared with digital photos stored in an NEC data base. The company claims that during tests with “1,800 Andes melons”, the error rate stood at just 1 in 1 million. NEC says the tech will one day enable end consumers and distributors to check the origin date and shipment date of fruit just by taking pictures (instead of relying on bar codes and other methods). The company expects the system to be commercially available in 2-3 years.