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Technology

The technology layer behind future-ready fresh produce packhouses.

Agrograde’s technology is built around one of the hardest problems in fresh produce operations: making quality decisions consistent at commercial speed. Vector AI brings advanced optical inspection and defect detection to fruits and vegetables. WaveMotion brings gentle, crop-specific grading to onions without damaging the outer skin. Together, these technologies help packhouses move from manual judgment to intelligent, automated, and increasingly autonomous quality operations.

Agrograde Vector Series optical sorting line, full view

Flagship one: Vector AI

The smartest optical sorter for your produce.

India's smartest AI sorter for potatoes, built on 8 years of data used to train A.I. models.

Up to 96%

detection accuracy

Realtime

defect detection

Up to 8

images per crop

1–20 MT/hr

throughput range

The defects that drive rejection, detected consistently.

Most quality disputes begin with a small number of defect classes: rot, sprouts, greening, holes, cuts, and other visible quality issues. Manual inspection catches them inconsistently, especially across long shifts and mixed lots. Vector applies one inspection standard to every item, with up to 96% detection accuracy across tested varieties and defect types.

Potato with a rotten patch on its surface

Rotten

The defect that spreads. One missed rotten item accelerates decay through the lot around it.

Potato with green sprouts emerging from the crown

Sprouts

Identified early, including small sprouts that manual lines pass at speed.

Potato with green discolouration on the skin

Greening

Colour variations detected across skin tones and varieties, not just on pale-skinned lots.

Potato with small holes in the skin

Holes

Insect damage caught before the lot is bagged.

Potato with deep cuts across the surface

Deep cuts

Harvest and handling cuts graded by severity, not guessed from a colour zone.

Potato with light surface cuts

Minor cuts

Surface-level damage separated from cosmetic skin variation.

Defect segmentation beyond colour sorting.

Vector AI identifies the exact defect region on each item, analysing texture, boundary shape, location, and its relationship to the surrounding skin. This helps separate real defects from natural colour variation and improves sorting consistency across varieties and seasons.

Two potatoes with their defect regions precisely outlined and highlighted in red by Vector's AI

Up to 8 images per item. Fewer blind spots.

Single-view inspection leaves blind spots where defects can go unseen. Vector reduces those blind spots using a patent-pending mechanism that turns each item under industrial area-scan cameras, capturing up to 8 images per item. Each image is processed on-machine in real time, giving Vector one of the highest surface coverages in the optical sorting category.

Vector camera capture 1 of 8 of a potato as it rotates through the vision zone01
Vector camera capture 2 of 8 of a potato as it rotates through the vision zone02
Vector camera capture 3 of 8 of a potato as it rotates through the vision zone03
Vector camera capture 4 of 8 of a potato as it rotates through the vision zone04
Vector camera capture 5 of 8 of a potato as it rotates through the vision zone05
Vector camera capture 6 of 8 of a potato as it rotates through the vision zone06
Vector camera capture 7 of 8 of a potato as it rotates through the vision zone07
Vector camera capture 8 of 8 of a potato as it rotates through the vision zone08

Up to eight captures per item as it rotates through the vision zone.

Area-scan cameras

High-resolution industrial cameras built for continuous line duty, not adapted webcams.

On-machine compute

Deep-learning models run on the line itself. No cloud dependency, so sorting continues when the network does not.

A fraction of a second per decision

Each defect decision is made in a fraction of a second, fast enough to classify and route every item at full line speed.

Crop-specific vision for real produce variability.

Every crop behaves differently on a sorting line. Vector is designed around crop shape, skin texture, turning behaviour, and defect signatures, enabling consistent inspection across crops such as potato, onion, and tomato. The platform can be configured for new lines or integrated into existing packhouse workflows.

Fresh unwashed potato on a white background

Potato

Rot, sprouts, greening, holes, and cuts on unwashed, mixed-variety lots, 1–20 MT per hour.

Fresh red onion with intact skin on a white background

Onion

Black smut, skin-out, sprouting, and rot removed before storage, with handling tuned for loose skin.

Fresh ripe red tomato on a white background

Tomato

A vision unit designed for the shape of the crop, with gentle handling for soft produce.

Mixed varieties without constant recalibration.

Skin texture, baseline colour, and defect signatures change across varieties, seasons, and growing regions. Vector's models are built on 8 years of data used to train A.I. models across this variability, helping the same machine handle multiple varieties in the same shift with minimal changeover effort.

Fast rejection, gentle handling.

Once a defect is identified, the rejection system diverts the item into the reject stream at line speed. The mechanism is designed to maintain throughput of up to 20 MT per hour while handling produce gently.

Your machine stays installed. Its intelligence keeps improving.

Every season of deployment adds new defect patterns, varietal variation, and operating edge cases. Vector's software can be updated as models improve, helping the machine stay current while the hardware remains installed on your line.

Flagship two: WaveMotion

The grading technology that finally works on onions without damaging them.

Indian onion carries a loose, papery skin that protects shelf life and holds much of the market grade. Any frictional or shearing force lifts it, which is why graders that rub produce against rollers and screens damage the produce they are meant to sort. WaveMotion is Agrograde's answer, developed over 6 years of R&D for the GradePlus Series, and it is what makes automated onion grading possible without that damage.

India's only grader that avoids skin damage to onions.

Agrograde GradePlus Pro WaveMotion size grading line for onion

A gentle, wave-like motion. No damaging forces.

Onions move in a controlled lift-and-drop wave along laser-cut grading belts, settling into their correct size opening without being dragged or thrown. No rubbing, no skinout.

Up to 99% size accuracy

Machine grading makes the size specification objective and repeatable: 2 to 4 grades, belt sets swappable for different varieties and buyer requirements.

Built for the floor

Portable, so the machine moves to the produce instead of adding a handling step. Silent, power-efficient operation with single-button start and stop.

GradePlus Max

Compact and efficient. 4 to 6 MT per hour.

GradePlus Pro

High speed. 8 to 10 MT per hour.

GradePlus MG

Tractor-mounted. 4 to 6 MT per hour, grading wherever the produce is.

Why grade before storage at all: when onions go in ungraded, smaller bulbs settle into the voids between larger ones and choke the airflow the structure is built to provide. Across the Nashik belt, 30–40% of stored onions rot or go to waste in an average year. Uniform size preserves the air movement that decides how much of the lot survives the season.

Watch it sort.

Product video: add the YouTube ID in src/content/site.js

More machine footage on YouTube.

Specifications

Configurations vary by crop and site. The figures below cover the Vector and GradePlus ranges.

Vector: throughput and handling
Throughput range
1–20 MT/hr (configurable variants)
Input size handled
20–160 mm
Exits
2–4 customisable lanes
Rejection mechanism
Pneumatic actuators, calibrated for fresh produce
Input condition
Unwashed, unsorted, mixed-lot produce
Vector: vision and compute
Detection accuracy
Up to 96%
Captures per item
Up to 8 images
Decision time
Real-time (on-edge inference)
Cameras
Industrial high-resolution area-scan
Compute
On-machine deep-learning inference, no cloud dependency
Crops
Potato, onion, tomato
Defects detected
Rot, sprouts, greening, holes, deep cuts, minor cuts
Vector: operations
Variety changeover
No recalibration between varieties
Software updates
Included; detection improves with field data
Pre-processing
Integrated dust remover and mechanical pre-grader
Line integration
Retrofit-ready; works with grading, weighing, and packing lines
GradePlus: WaveMotion grading
Grading principle
WaveMotion belt-based grading by diameter
Size accuracy
Up to 99%
Skin damage
Zero; no frictional or shearing contact
Throughput
Max 4–6 / Pro 8–10 / MG 4–6 MT per hour
Size grades
2–4 (belt sets swappable)
Crops
Onion, potato, garlic
Mobility
Portable; tractor-mounted MG variant available

Get in touch with our team!

Tell us your current process and challenges in grading and sorting.