New Products

Vicky BoydGreg Jones, owner of AgSort, points out the features of his E-Sorter potato sorter.

Greg Jones, a veteran northern Florida potato grower and owner of St. Augustine, Fla.-based AgSort, has developed the E-Sorter optical potato sorter with growers in mind.

"I designed it exactly for what I thought I wanted as a grower," Jones says.

He displayed the machine at the recent Potato Expo in Orlando.

The system is light-based. Four different colors of lights—green, red, blue and infrared—scan each potato as it passes by.

The amount of reflectance is measured and fed into a computer.

Users can easily set the lightness or darkness defect parameters as well as the size of each defect.

Lightness measures areas of the potato missing skin. Darkness measures many blemishes.

Depending on the settings, the machine will kick out tubers not meeting the grade.

Each sorter can handle eight potatoes per second per lane, with up to 26 lanes, Jones says.

It can handle unwashed but brushed potatoes as long as there isn't mud caked onto them.

Jones says designing the mechanical part of the machine was easy; the electrical part took much longer.

He says he plans to try out a prototype in north Florida this harvest season.