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Table grapes are inherently perishable and unstable, tending to deteriorate after harvest. The logistics stability of table grape that is closely related to product quality tends to decline. This paper proposed a contour diagram-based graphical method in order to evaluate the logistics stability visually and easily under variable temperature. Firmness was selected as the indicator of table grape quality and shelf life prediction. Two kinds of experiments were designed to evaluate the proposed method by comparing with the kinetics method: one is isothermal experiment with five temperatures and the other is simulated variable temperature. The results suggest that both methods have the ability to evaluate the logistics stability at variable temperature, but the proposed method can provide a more accurate evaluation of logistics stability intuitively and conveniently. Furthermore, two prerequisite conditions are required for applying the proposed method, i.e., the time ratio for the equivalent logistics transformation at different temperatures must match in the kinetics theory and the primary state of the quality index should equal the initial state of the corresponding contour diagram. Practical Applications The proposed method could be applied to evaluate the logistics stability for any products and provide the cold chain management.

BACKGROUND The main export varieties in China are brand-name, high-quality bred aquatic products. Among them, tilapia has become the most important and fast-growing species since extensive consumer markets in North America and Europe have evolved as a result of commodity prices, year-round availability and quality of fresh and frozen products. As the largest tilapia farming country, China has over one-third of its tilapia production devoted to further processing and meeting foreign market demand. RESULTS Using by tilapia fillet processing, this paper introduces the efforts for developing and evaluating ITS-TF: an intelligent traceability system integrated with statistical process control (SPC) and fault tree analysis (FTA). Observations, literature review and expert questionnaires were used for system requirement and knowledge acquisition; scenario simulation was applied to evaluate and validate ITS-TF performance. CONCLUSION The results show that traceability requirement is evolved from a firefighting model to a proactive model for enhancing process management capacity for food safety; ITS-TF transforms itself as an intelligent system to provide functions on early warnings and process management by integrated SPC and FTA. The valuable suggestion that automatic data acquisition and communication technology should be integrated into ITS-TF was achieved for further system optimization, perfection and performance improvement. © 2014 Society of Chemical Industry

Tilapia has been named as the ‘food fish of the 21st century’ and has become the most important farmed fish. China is the world leader in tilapia production and export. Identifying information and functional requirements is critical in developing an efficient traceability system because traceability has become a fundamental prerequisite for exporting aquaculture products. Results: This paper examines the export-oriented tilapia chains and information flow in the chains, and identifies the key actors, information requirements and information-capturing points. Unified Modeling Language (UML) technology is adopted to describe the information and functionality requirement for chain traceability. The barriers of traceability system adoption are also identified. Conclusion: The results show that the traceability data consist of four categories that must be recorded by each link in the chain. The functionality requirement is classified into four categories from the fundamental information record to decisive quality control; the top three barriers to the traceability system adoption are: high costs of implementing the system, lack of experienced and professional staff; and low level of government involvement and support.

Low temperature water-free keep live transport is a new method for transportation of aquatic products. The fish or other aquatic products will be suspended animation of the dormant state, by the appropriate gradient cooling of in their corresponding ecological ice temperature zone, to reduce respiration and metabolism to improve the survival rates. The article developed a mobile wireless monitoring and traceability management system to acquire micro-ambient gas, humidity, and temperature intelligently in logistics and control them automatically to release transport stress, guarantee the keep alive rates and meat quality of aquatic products. Finally, through test of live Chinese sturgeon water-free keep live transport under the management of MW-MTM system, the survival rate was increased by 5% to reach 99.5% after using this system, reduced the labor force 10% and visualized the traceability of transportation based on Baidu map system. Practical applications Aquatic products water-free live transport in ecological ice temperature zone by the appropriate gradient cooling, to make aquatic products in suspended animation in the dormant state, reduce respiration, and metabolism to improve the survival rate. Through the implementation of the monitoring online metabolic gas and controlling of temperature, humidity of cold chain so as to control and trace the quality of the live transport. Those applications of live fish transport provided the theoretical basis for the tracing and optimization of cold chain logistics for live aquatic products.

As one of the widely consumed foods, aquatic products are prone to spoilage and deteriorate in the cold chain. It is very important and necessary to trace and track the aquatic products' quality and safety in the cold chain. This paper aims to develop a quality and safety traceability system integrated with wireless sensor network (WSN) and quick response (QR) code (SMS-CQ) for aquatic products. This paper analyzed temperature fluctuations of aquatic products in cold-chain logistics that is implemented and evaluated in an actual cold chain. The results show that compared with the traditional system, SMS-CQ is an effective quality management tool that leads to real-time monitoring and tracing of the aquatic products in the cold chain: WSN technology enables SMS-CQ to automatically realize the real-time temperature acquisition, wireless remote transmission and monitoring; QR code provides valid means for the QR code generation, error correction and static and sensed dynamic information inquiry. Practical Applications The proposed method could be extended by future researchers or practitioners for future work in many wide areas in cold-chain monitoring and traceability applications.