Blockchain: An emerging novel technology to upgrade the current fresh fruit supply chain

With the globalization of trade, the current fresh fruit supply chain now incorporates multiple entities, wide distribution, and intricate transactions. This brings about the issues of information tamper resistance, supply-demand relationship, and traceable supervision. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology with advantages of tamper resistance of information. It is expected to solve the problem of transaction resource allocation among several untrusted participants in the fresh fruit supply chain. This article recommends the use of blockchain to upgrade the current fresh fruit supply chain, and highlights the advantages of blockchain in supply chain management. The obstacles faced by the implementation of this technology in relation to participants’ attitude, fruit preservation, and blockchain technical loopholes have been analyzed as well. Blockchain can upgrade fresh fruit supply chain. It collects and uploads reliable data from fruit picking to final consumption through IoT-related technologies. After hash encryption and consensus verification, it is transmitted to P2P network for sharing. It balances the tension between supply and demand, brings funds for enterprises, simplifies supervision and traceability. Smart contracts reduce the cost of communication and trust. However, blockchain has some limitations such as difficulties in incorporating architecture, reliance on the IoT, immature fruit preservation technology, unclear legal supervision, lack of reference cases, and technical loopholes. • The combination of blockchain and IoT can collect reliable data from fruit picking to consumers. • Blockchain and smart contracts can reduce the operating cost of the fresh fruit supply chain. • Blockchain can simplify the process of government supervision and traceability. • The enterprise application of blockchain in fresh fruit supply chain also faces risks and challenges.