Resumen
Food waste occurs from harvesting to consumption. Applying procedures and technologies, changing attitudes, and promoting awareness have positive social, economic, and environmental impacts that can contribute to reducing food waste. The paper presents a decision support system (DSS) to predict the quality evolution of fruits and vegetables, particularly of peaches, and estimate its commercialization period at the highest overall perceived quality by consumers, thus contributing to reducing food waste. The Fuzzy Logic DSS predicts the evolution of the physical-chemical parameters of peaches (hardness, soluble solids content, and acidity) depending on the cultivar (Royal Summer and Royal Time), storage time, and temperature. As the range of the values of these physical-chemical parameters of peaches that consumers perceive to be at their highest quality are known, the DSS predicts the marketable period in days. Case studies were developed to analyze the influence of each physical-chemical parameter on the commercialization days (number and time to start). It is concluded that temperature is the most important parameter for fruit conservation. A low value of conservation temperature allows for the significant extension of the time that peaches can be sold at the highest quality. Hardness is used to determine the harvest date since it is an index of fruit ripeness. The same conclusion is obtained for the influence of the soluble solids content. The influence of acidity on marketable days is less than the other physical-chemical parameters. This DSS helps retailers to sell their peaches at the highest quality with benefits for all parties. It also helps in the decision-making concerning the actions to take when fruits are reaching the end of their highest quality by predicting the range of the commercialization days. This formulation can be extended to other fruits and vegetables and in the last instance contribute to the reduction of food loss and waste, consequently promoting social, economic, and environmental aspects of our daily life.