The association
The "SHIELD" association develops basic concepts for ensuring the safety of (organic) food from harvest to distribution. By developing technologies for new detection methods, defective, spoiled or falsified products can be identified more quickly, efficiently and reliably in the process chain.
Pursuing this digital transformation of analytics, sensors and diagnostics in food quality management, collaboration between eight scientific institutions and ten companies is underway, together with the monitoring and control authorities, which are familiar with the challenges of monitoring and ensuring the quality of food.
The focus is on the use of different imaging methods as well as chemical and spectroscopic sensors, which are used in combination. System solutions are being developed for the complex interplay of manufacturing and product chains, which can be used directly during harvesting, transport or goods receipt. In addition, automated data analysis is intended to improve the digital linking of the value chain through to official monitoring and thus increase the safety and quality of (organic) food by optimising logistics.
Overall, the project strengthens regional agriculture in international competition, benefiting small and medium-sized enterprises in the agricultural sector in particular. This is also beneficial for organic food producers and distributors, as the collaboratively developed processes provide them with decision support for planning their production, storage, distribution and quality assurance processes. For this purpose, mathematical forecasting and optimisation procedures are being developed and made available in the form of a comprehensively documented feasibility study.
