Designing a Static Counterpart for fruits and vegetables in transit to accurately replicate highly time-dependent environmental conditions

• Peltier-based climate chamber replicates dynamic cold-chain profiles in real time. • Static Counterpart mimics physiological responses of produce during transport. • Cascade PID control with Smith predictor ensures fast, overshoot-free tracking. • Validation using real refrigerated truck data and produce thermal properties. Fruits and vegetables remain living organisms after harvest. Because the world depends on transporting these goods, understanding the conditions they experience in transit is essential: good post-harvesting design can mean the difference between food arriving in good condition or perishing, with implications for availability as well as finances. While several studies have qualitatively examined condition changes during transport, this work goes further by providing a static counterpart (SC) at the crop site that undergoes the same changes as transported produce. To realize this, the thermodynamic responses of fruits and vegetables and the chamber requirements were thoroughly investigated. The SC’s hardware and control algorithms were validated against temperature profiles derived from real-world transportation scenarios, authentic thermal characteristics of vegetables, and measured chamber properties. Results show the SC achieves thermal dynamics fast enough to match the characteristic reaction times of crucial physiological responses of vegetables (e.g., stomatal opening and closing for respiration). Furthermore, the control algorithms effectively recreate real transport conditions with high accuracy, achieving a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 0.89 °C in tracking real-world profiles. The developed SC enables next-level postharvest control and understanding, with opportunities for agriculture, food-chain management, and logistics insurance.