By means of ANDREW DUNNE
Dr Anastasia Ktenioudaki tracks strawberries in Ireland with high-tech sensors. He is part of a recent European research project to reduce the amount of fresh food that is thrown away because it is not eaten before the date listed on the packaging.
‘We have a serious food waste problem,’ said Ktenioudaki, one of the experts behind Horizon-funded FreshProof. ‘We need to come up with new solutions for everyone to solve this.’
Fresh focus
Globalization has created a paradox in the food industry: while greatly expanding the range of products on store shelves, it has contributed to large amounts of food not being consumed by making it more abundant and extending travel from farm to fork. Almost a third of all food produced is wasted or lost, according to the United Nations World Food Programme, even as hundreds of millions of people around the world face hunger.
In the European Union, legislation requires that most pre-packaged foods display a date that indicates the basis of their safety (‘use by’) or quality (‘best before’). As part of a general review of food labeling rules, the European Commission is considering a proposal to completely abolish the use of ‘best before’ dates.
Ktenioudaki’s team has developed a sensor system that monitors environmental conditions for products at each stage of the supply chain. With this small innovation, researchers are confident they can provide more accurate ‘best before’ dates and prevent food from being thrown away unnecessarily.
‘Typically, food supply chains work using a first-in, first-out principle where whatever product arrives first at a distribution center or store is also the first leave,’ said Ktenioudaki. ‘Due to the current global trading of food, we now need a smart system so that – instead – we can prioritize fresh products that expire before others.’
From pasture to plate, many factors affect the life span of fresh produce. These include pre-harvest conditions, such as the amount of rain or sunlight, and post-harvest conditions such as temperature changes and even vibrations on the road as the food is transported by truck.
With FreshProof, Ktenioudaki believes that combining data about the product’s growing conditions and its journey to the store will help make more accurate predictions about its actual shelf life. This means more goods reach the consumer at the right time, and less waste.
‘We make standard assumptions about environmental conditions for products that inform how ‘best-before’ dates are determined,’ said Ktenioudaki. ‘We know that things can go wrong along the way when it comes to transporting food products, but we can better understand how a product’s shelf life affects it and use that knowledge in a smarter way. ‘
Correct Berry
That’s where Irish strawberries come into the picture.
Ktenioudaki is part of a team at the University of South Florida in the US that created a system using multiple sensors and cloud-based software to predict product shelf life. The project draws on years of expertise among farmers and distributors to determine when a product is past its prime.
‘Strawberries are a high-value – but perishable – product where time and temperature are always important,’ says Ktenioudaki.
In addition to using temperature sensors on distribution routes, researchers are using hyperspectral cameras to provide detailed views of when the fruit is ripe. Over time, this technology will be available in standard cameras.
The results provide grounds for optimism. The predictions of the rest of the shelf of strawberries were almost twice as accurate.
Using these insights, the team now wants to improve its work, find new commercial partners and investors, and apply the FreshProof concept to other fruits as well as vegetables.
‘In the future this method can be applied to any fresh product, and may even help to evaluate the products in your refrigerator,’ said Ktenioudaki. ‘Advances in technology and AI are rapid and we believe they can have a huge impact on improving supply chains, reducing food waste and protecting food security.’
Unpacking the packaging
The waste problem goes beyond the foods themselves to include their packaging, where the industry produces a lot of plastic.
Another group of scientists used its expertise in material-chemistry to create BIOSMART, which aims to cut the large amount of plastic wrapping used for foods as well as extend the shelf life of fresh produce.
‘Food waste is one problem – plastic is another,’ said Dr Amaya Igartua, who coordinates the project. ‘We have a situation where the existing compostable materials are not strong enough to protect the product, so we use plastics.’
Almost no food packaging is compostable and many forms of plastic cannot be recycled.
One of Igartua’s solutions is to engineer stronger bio-based materials that are strong enough to carry food but break down afterwards.
The second goal is to design packaging using only fully compostable or recyclable materials. Containers are often made up of many types of plastic and may contain aluminum, which complicates any recycling.
BIOSMART is encouraged by the early test results, which inform the direction for the next generation of compostable or recyclable food packaging.
The project also found public acceptance. Now the plan is to increase investments and expand research to get these packaging products in stores.
Quick data
Like FreshProof, BIOSMART also solves food waste by using sensors that detect marginal differences in gases – oxygen, amines and carbon dioxide – inside the packaging. Changes in gas levels, detected by sensors printed inside the package, affect the condition of the food.
A level increase can mean that a product is coming out, providing accurate, real-time, information as opposed to an arbitrary ‘best before’ date. The concept has already been tested for packaging with cheese, ham and fish.
Over time, Igartua hopes this technology will help distributors and consumers reduce the amount of food thrown away.
Ultimately, he believes it will also help change how food is sold and stored. To get to that stage, his team is working with academic and industrial partners around Europe to fund the next step of the work.
The research in this article was funded through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) of the EU. This article was originally published on horizonthe EU Research and Innovation Magazine.
