A Blockchain-Based Framework to Make the Citrus Crop Supply Chain Transparent and Reliable in Agriculture

Abstract

Citrus is an important food security crop in the world, and the health benefits or otherwise of the commodity depend on the quality and safety of the grain. It is used in several by-products such as citrus pudding, citrus fritters, and citrus bread. With more and more people paying attention to food safety issues, attention to the safe and stable source of citrus is becoming more important. Problems in this supply chain including those that result in reduced revenue for the farmers and the government, and major losses during off-season arise primarily from lack of trust, dependability, openness, accountability, origin, and safety. To address these difficulties, we present a secure and transparent framework using Blockchain technology to monitor citrus crops from the farm to the consumer’s table. We propose a new cryptocurrency token named citrus coin (CC) which will be used in the process of purchasing investors in the citrus n value chain. This system includes an elaborate demonstration, a CC cryptocurrency wallet, and an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). The functioning of the framework is based on smart contracts to manage the transactions which are traceable and transparent through the entire citrus crop supply chain while the CC can be converted into traditional fiat money. Also, we use the decentralized storage system (InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)) to store information about corporations and sellers to improve security, transparency, and access to data. Furthermore, our experimentation and analysis, demonstrate that the proposed framework provides better results compared to the existing solutions for the supply chain in terms of contract verification time, regular gas transaction efficiency, and block generation latency.