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ICEAMM 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 343 (2018) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/343/1/012023
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IOT for Agriculture: Food Quality and

Safety
Gunawan Witjaksono1*, Almur Abdelkreem Saeed Rabih1, Noorhana bt Yahya2,
Sagir Alva3
1
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS
Seri Iskandar, 32610, Perak Darul Ridzuan, Malaysia
2
Department of Fundamental Applied Science, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS
Seri Iskandar, 32610, Perak Darul Ridzuan, Malaysia
3
Mechanical Engineering Department, Mercu Buana University
Jl. Meruya Selatan no.1 Jakarta Barat, Indonesia

gunawan.witjaksono@utp.edu.my

Abstract—Food is the main energy source for the living beings; as such food quality and safety
have been in the highest demand throughout the human history. Internet of things (IOT) is a
technology with a vision to connect anything at anytime and anywhere. Utilizing IOT in the
food supply chain (FSC) is believed to enhance the quality of life by tracing and tracking the
food conditions and live-sharing the obtained data with the consumers or the FSC supervisors.
Currently, full application of IOT in the FSC is still in the developing stage and there is a big
gap for improvements. The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of applying IOT
for agriculture to trace and track food quality and safety. Mobile application for food freshness
investigation was successfully developed and the results showed that consumer mobile camera
could be used to test the freshness of food. By applying the IOT technology this information
could be shared with all the consumers and also the supervisors.

1. Introduction
For the past few years, food quality and safety has been a major concern and a hot topic in all around
the globe, and especially in china for many reasons [1]. For instance, the incident of 2008 Sanlu
melamine milk powder scandal has shocked the world due to its effect on thousands of babies, which
resulted in death of several of them. Another incident that stunned the Chinese community and the
world happened in 2011, when the meat from the Shuanghui Group (the largest meat supplier in
China) was discovered to contain a substance (Clenbuterol hydrochloride) that is prohibited to add to
food stuffs in China [2]. Food quality and safety gains attentions of both government agencies and
consumers due to the major loss to the state revenue, and also the consumers health risks that caused
by breaching the food standards. Therefore, there is an imperative need to develop technologies that
can guarantee the safety of food along the whole food supply chains (FSCs) that include production,
processing, packing, transportation, storage, distribution and sale for the consumers. Many researches
have been conducted around the world with the development of some technologies like internet of
things (IOT) to help the factories to resolve issues related to food quality and safety. IOT is a vision to

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ICEAMM 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 343 (2018) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/343/1/012023
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connect to anything at anytime and anywhere, and it is expected to drastically change the status of our
life in years to come. It is defined by European commission information society as “Things having
identities and virtual personalities operating in smart spaces using intelligent interfaces to connect
and communicate within social, environmental, and user contexts” [3]. IOT technologies are believed
to be able to provide potential solutions to resolve issues of traceability, visibility and controllability
along the FSCs line [4]. IOT technologies have already been for many years in the pharmaceutical
supply chain to enhance the quality and to keep the drugs safe [1]. IOT will play a role in resolving the
issues of food quality and safety in term of managing factory staffs, food products and also in term of
providing useful information to the customers to make them feel easier and comfortable to track or
consume the food with great confidence [5].

Food packaging plays an important role to preserve the quality and safety along the line of the supply
chain. Traditional packaging is only meant to protect the food from the environmental changes such as,
temperature, humidity, light, gaseous emissions or microbial attacks. On the other hand, active
packaging systems are those which have interactive communication between the packed food and the
packaging environment to provide protection to extend the shelf life of the food. Active packaging
protects the packed food by containing active components that release or absorb substances into/from
the food to keep the conditions under control. In contrary intelligent packaging does not contain active
components. However, it has intelligent systems that communicate with the supervisors or consumers
to provide the current status of the food [6]. Smart packaging devices can be divided into two types.
The first type is called data carriers such as barcode labels and radio frequency identification (RFID)
tags, while the second type is called package indicators, which are used to monitor environmental
changes such as time-temperature indicators and gas indicators. Fadable ink for time-temperature
control of food freshness has been widely used in printing labels on food packages for the freshness
indication. The working principle is that, as time passes, the ink will disappear and indicating that the
food is no longer fresh [7]. The label ink will react to the oxygen which will make the colour to fade
with time or temperature change. The rate of colour change is varied by the chemical composition used
to make the ink. Figure. 1 shows how the label ink is faded with time. Gas indicators are labels that
detect the presence of a gas due to the food condition change inside the package [6]. Polyaniline
(PANI) film was used in [8] as a sensing layer to check the spoilage of fish based on reaction of the
film with ammonia released as the fish is spoiled. PANI films will react to the ammonia released due
to the fish spoilage as a result of bacterial growth. The reaction will lead to the change of the films
colour. Another smart packaging indicator was reported in [9], which is a novel sticker sensor based
on methyl red immobilized on bacterial cellulose membrane for broiler chicken freshness assessment.
The colour of the sticker changes from red to yellow to indicate the chicken spoilage as shown in
Figure. 2. As the chicken spoilage progresses, the pH level increases due to increase of spoilage
volatile amines, which will occupy the headspace of the food package.

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ICEAMM 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 343 (2018) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/343/1/012023
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Methyl red/Cellulose membrane

Time (days)

2 1 0

Fresh Medium Not fresh

3 4 5

Figure. 1. Fadable ink for time – temperature Figure. 2. Sticker sensor design based on
control of food freshness [7] methyl red/cellulose membrane [9]

The reaction of the volatile amine with the methyl red/cellulose membrane will cause the color of the
membrane to change to yellow. The aim of this paper is to explore the possibility of using the internet
of thing technology to provide a solution for the food quality and safety control along the whole food
supply chain.

2. Architecture of IOT technology

IOT technologies composes of different distributed resources that can be selected depending on the
need of the different users and organizations around the globe [1]. By considering the vertical view of
the IOT technology which focuses on the technical implementation, the resources of IOT can be
categorized under three different layers, which are considered to be the main architecture layers of the
IOT [10]. These layers are the sensing layer, the network layer and application layer as shown in
Figure 3.

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ICEAMM 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 343 (2018) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/343/1/012023
1234567890‘’“”

Intelligent Food Environment Industry

Traffic Traceability Production Monitor
Service Sub-layer

Application layer
Intelligent Service Supporting Cloud Middleware
Direction of technical implementation flow

Processing Platform Computing Technology

Suport Sub-layer

2.5G/3G/4G Internet WLAN GPS

IP

Network layer

Coordination treatment
WSN Ad-hoc Middleware technology
technology
Collaboration

Sensing layer
Sensor RFID UWB NFC Wi-Fi Camera
Data Acquisition

Figure. 3. Layers of the IOT architecture from the perspective of technical implementation [10]

2.1 Sensing layer

Sensing layer can be subdivided into two layers based on the functions of the units. They are data
acquisition and collaboration layers. In the data acquisition layer the things from the physical world
like temperature, humidity, pressure, concentration, multimedia data..etc., are sensed using devices
like sensors, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, Ultra-wide Band (UWB), Near field
communication (NFC), WiFi and cameras. On the other hand, collaboration layer focusses on the
technologies applied in short distance data transmission, context awareness and massive information
processing. For these applications technologies like Wireless sensor network (WSN), Ad-hoc network,
coordination treatment technology and middleware technology.

2.2 Network layer

Network systems have been used for many years already, and it is a heterogeneous system that
comprises backbone, mobile communication, wireless local area network (WLAN), satellite
communication networks, Global positioning system (GPS), Bluetooth etc. The data acquired by the
sensing layer is transmitted to the application layer through this network layer.

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ICEAMM 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 343 (2018) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/343/1/012023
1234567890‘’“”

2.3 Application layer

Application layer is sub-divided into two layers. They are support sub-layer and service sub-layer.
Support sub-layer process the data using intelligent processing unit, and then will deliver to the user
based on the issued request. Due to the large volume of the data involved the system integrated high
processing data technologies such as cloud computing, peer to peer (P2P) middleware technology.
Service sub-layer provides the interface and platforms to support the individual public services.
Typical applications of this sub-layer will be security monitoring, disaster monitoring, vehicle
scheduling monitoring and intelligent household appliances monitoring.

3. IOT technologies application in food supply chain

As shown in Figure 4, the overall view of applying IOT technology in food supply chain comprises of
heterogeneous devices, with ubiquitous data exchange, tracking and localization systems [4]. There is
well defined connectivity throughout the supply chain between the food producers, transportation
bodies and also the food consumers. For instance when the temperature exceeds the desired value
inside the food truck, the system will trigger an alarm and send a signal to the refrigeration controls to
increase the ventilation to re-adjust the temperature and keep it under control. Same process is applied
for other parameters like, humidity, gas concentrations, and ambient pressure and so on.

Figure. 4. Overall picture view of applying IOT in food supply chain [4]
4. Some applications of IOT sensing layer
As was mentioned before, this layer is the first layer that is used to collect the data required for the
IOT technology to function. Following are two examples of applications used for food freshness level
detection and food authonticity identification.

4.1 Mobile camera app development for food freshness detection

As shown in Figure 3 one of the devices used for data acquisition is camera. For this purpose to take
advantage of the mobile camera of the food consumers, a mobile app has been developed as part of the
IOT technology used for the food supply chain. This app is to check the freshness of the prawn and
displays the results on the screen of consumer’s mobile. More information about the mobile app is
presented in our previous published article in [11]. In brief, the mobile app developed is based on

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ICEAMM 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 343 (2018) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/343/1/012023
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chromatic parameter to display the freshness level of the food directly by reading the RGB colour from
the colour changing labels, and correlating it with the colour of pH paper. Then the app will display
the freshness of the food by stating whether the food is “fresh, “good” or “spoiled”. Figure 5 shows
the results of the app from the screen of the mobile phone.

(a) (b) (c)

Figure. 5. Testing of Apps on pH papers of (a) pH 6, (b) pH 7 and (c) pH 8

4.2 Food type authenticity

Another application example of developing sensors for IOT sensing layer is using Fourier transform
infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to differentiate non-halal meat from halal meat which is necessary for
the Muslims consumption. The data collected by FTIR sensor could be communicated directly through
the communication layer to the application layer, where consumers and also supervisors can directly
access the type of the meat source. FTIR was used to differentiate pig fat (lard) from the fats of cow,
chicken and lamb in a broad range of mid infrared spectroscopy ranges from 400 4000 cm-1. The full
description of the results analysis are reported earlier in [12]. Results at wavenumber 2361.05 cm-1 is
shown in Figure 6.

1.04 Cow fat Chicken fat Lamb fat Lard

Absorbance

1.02

j
1.00

2200 2300 2400 2500

-1
Wavenumber cm
Figure. 6. FTIR peaks of lard, cow, chicken and lamb fats at 2361.05 cm-1

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ICEAMM 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 343 (2018) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/343/1/012023
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5. Conclusion
This paper presented an idea of utilizing internet of things (IOT) for agriculture, food quality and
safety. A mobile application (app) for the sensing layer of the IOT technology was developed and the
app shows that the freshness of food could be investigated by studying the picture of the food and
comparing it to the reference picture. The condition of the food whether it is fresh, good or spoiled
could be shared with all consumers and food supervisors through the network and application layers of
the IOT technology.

Acknowledgment
The authors of this paper acknowledge the financial support by UTP under STIRF-UTP, project code:
0153AA-F71 and by Petronas Research Fund (PRF) under by 0153AB-A32.
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ICEAMM 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 343 (2018) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/343/1/012023
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