What’s Happening in Quality Development?

Packing Line Evaluations

We continue to evaluate each of the packing lines for problem areas where fruit may be bruised using an inertial ball that runs with the fruit and records impacts. This information is being used to add padding to problem areas on the lines and reduce bruising in the box.

Food Safety Program

The Okanagan Tree Fruit Cooperative is very proud of our food safety program. This detailed program covers all aspects of food safety and security from farm to buyer. The program minimizes risks of food borne illness, maximises food quality and ensures traceability of our product at every stage of production and sales.

Policy and Procedures Manual

Quality Development compiles a Policy and Procedures Manual to ensure consistent operations in all of the company facilities. It also documents all of the company policies and procedures and acts as a reference manual for OKTF employees.

Receiving

We have implemented a rigorous segregation program that will designate lots for cold storage, short-term CA storage or long-term CA storage based on factors including maturity, packable quality, and rot susceptability.

ORP Systems

ORP Systems are installed at each plant. These systems monitor and maintain a buffered chlorine solution in the flume water to decrease spore loads, ultimately decreasing breakdown in the box. This system also helps control bacteria in the flumes and keeps us Food Safe!

CA Operations Manual & Training

The manual for CA Operations is part of the P&P Manual and details CA room procedures and policies. This is especially relevant for new CA room practices including low oxygen storage of Gala and the use of MCP. We include new policies that include clearing the receiving slab every day and striving for short room loading times.

Fruit Decay Prevention Project

Research continues into rot mitigation. As we learn new information we pass it on to field service to communicate to growers in the orchard. Some of the work we’ve been doing over the past year includes:

• Resistance testing of common fungicides against fungal isolates: this helps us identify any potential resistance problems and gives us a tool to evaluate the efficacy of different products against specific fungi.
• We continue to monitor to look for early signs of moldy core and core rot infection in the orchard. This information is used to identify potential problem lots and storage designation at receiving.
• Ongoing monitoring of the ORP systems ensure the systems are working properly and that we continue reducing spore load in the flume water.
• Storage Room Sanitization: is in practice annually to reduce rot spore loads and help minimize potential damage to stored fruit
• Our resident rot specialist, Dr. Bill McPhee, is actively working with plant managers and field personnel to diagnose problems in house and in the field. Plans to build a reference manual for use in the field are underway.

Here is some of our work:

Internal Quality Assessment Trial Report