Dry Matter

Selling produce means ensuring that the product you pass along to your customers represents the highest quality. While you can sometimes assess quality just by looking at a piece of fruit, you often need something more sophisticated. Dry matter meters give you the means to measure the quality of your produce. Knowing when to harvest your crop using a dry matter tester allows you to produce a better product. 

It can also reduce the amount of spoilage in your crop while giving you a predictable harvest so you can make better long-term plans. You can use our dry matter meters in conjunction with software to forecast yields accurately and keep up to date with your orchards no matter where you are. 

QA Supplies sells advanced dry matter testers that let you use technology to improve outcomes at your farm or facility and sell better fruit to your customers. Learn more about dry matter meters and browse our selection. 

How to Test for Dry Matter

In the past, the only way to test for dry matter was to harvest a single fruit and dry it in the oven, calculating the dried weight divided by the fresh weight to get the dry matter reading. However, this method takes a long time and is a form of destructive testing. With dry matter meters, you can employ a near-infrared technology to measure critical factors such as starch degradation and chlorophyll, which indicate ripeness. 

Using the DMC tester is very easy — you just aim it at the crop and receive a reading within seconds, meaning you no longer have to destroy parts of your harvest to test for dry matter.