Harvest & Post-Harvest
Post-Harvest Lot Traceability & Quality Control
Quality observations are much more useful when each package or sample can be traced back to plant or harvest lot, room position, drying history, measurements, handling events, and test results.
Key concepts
- Traceability makes it possible to identify where variability entered the process
- Lot mixing can erase useful evidence
- Environmental data should be time-aligned with product movement
- A quality-control record should distinguish observation, measurement, decision, and disposition
What to measure or observe
- Assign a harvest lot before product enters shared processing areas
- Record room and zone
- Link measurements and sample IDs to the lot
- Document merges, splits, rejects, and final packages
Common mistakes
- Relabeling lots without retaining the original relationship
- Keeping room logs that cannot be linked to product
- Combining suspect and normal material before investigation
- Recording a pass/fail result without the underlying measurement
Visuals this lesson still needs
- Plant-to-package traceability map
- Lot split-and-merge diagram
- QC decision record example
- Environmental-data timeline