DiTECT

"DiTECT will develop an integrated framework for real-time detection, assessment, and mitigation of biological, chemical and environmental contaminants throughout the food supply chain. Bringing together research, industrial and food authority partners representing the agro-food industry in the EU and China, DiTECT aspires to establish the foundation for future food safety monitoring platforms, through the development of a standards-based, modular, Big Data-enabled platform, capable of accurately predicting food safety parameters of a given food product based on data collected in real-time via cost-efficient sensors, at crop, grain storage, livestock and finally in the food supply, incorporating blockchain processes. DiTECT integrates multidisciplinary research teams from fields such as microbial and spectroscopic fingerprinting technologies; emerging ICT-based food tracing systems; signal analysis and data mining. Microbial profiling will be attained via conventional microbiological analyses in tandem with advanced molecular methods (e.g., NGS-based metagenomics), while spectroscopic profiling will be based on spectral data generated using appropriate rapid, non-invasive methods and sensor devices. DiTECT recognizes that current food-chains are lacking a complete snapshot view of food safety at the crop/livestock and finished product levels, and so foresees the development of a cloud-enabled storage system for all data corresponding to different insights of product-specific safety aspects, to be integrated into. The novel food safety services will be demonstrated in four (4) real-world Pilots with the active engagement of 21 EU and 13 CN partners, using real datasets to validate efficiency improvements. The carefully structured work plan embodies a “multi-actor” approach to prototype and validates a ready-for-take-up framework of significant exploitation potential for the agro-food industry."