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Collaborate to innovate

The Smart Agrifood Industry Expo brings together international tech experts that will revolutionise the entire food value chain

The agrifood sector is facing major global challenges, such as sustainability and food securi­ty. In this context, deep tech will play a crucial role in transforming the industry, as it can help sustainable development and its incorporation into the entire agrifood value chain process has revolutionised the sector. At the Smart Agrifood lndustry Expo we had the opportunity to learn about projects that combine drones and photonics to optimise the treatment of plants, technologies that preserve fruit and vegetables without the need for refrigeration, innovations improving quality control and safety in processing, packaging or predicting the shelf life of food to avoid wastage, robots to improve animal welfare on farms and the introduction of mo­bile apps for precision agriculture.

Take a look at the video summary of the event:

The 2 days of the event allowed us to discover future trends in technology and innovation, featuring 30 international speakers and 45 exhibitors. It was a meeting point for technology transfer between deep tech researchers, entrepreneurs and end-users. Have a look at the overview of our main exhibitors here.

Below you can find the hightlights of the congress presentations and detailed information in their slides:

“Agrifood Challenges in the Age of Technical Disruption”
Beatriz Romanos, Founder of The TechFood and TechFood Magazine

In her opening speech, Beatriz Romanos has stated that in the age of technical disruption, we can think of going to Mars but humanity is facing big challenges and deep tech innovations can be a great ally in the sustainable environment, specially in the agrifood sector. Beatriz has also pointed out that those innovations have to be based in a viable business model in order to reach the market and generate the exponential growth and disruption for which they were developed.
“Applications of mobile robotics and high resolution remote sensing”
RicardoDiaz, Head of Smart Automatisation Department of AINIA
Read the presentation here.
In order to transform the world’s economy for a sustainable future, we need a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system and deep tech can help the agrifood sector. Ricardo Díaz has presented several projects and application cases like the implementation of collaborative robotics and drones in the farm or the use of AI to help farmers in their decision process.

“AONIR platform for in-line and real-time milk characterisation”
Iker García, CEO of AOTECH
Read the presentation here.

Iker García has presented the AONIR platform, that offers real-time information about quality and safety, from raw materials to the finished product. Since it monitores the fermentation of the ingredients, it enables the optimisation of mixing times and saves energy in the drying process, because the platform also offers a real-time determination of moisture.

“Application Fields of Synchrotron Light in food value chain”
Marta Ávila, Industrial Office Scientist of Alba Synchrotron
Read the presentation here.

Synchrotron Light is a powerful ally for the agrifood industry. Marta Avila has presented several application cases, like producing better chocolate (since the taste of chocolate depends on the predominant crystalline form generated when the chocolate cools down in the factory) or determining the oxidation states of agricultural products and food analysis.

“Selenium enriched wheat. Selection of chemical species by tunning plant growing conditions” Manuel Valiente, Separation Techniques in Chemistry Group at the UAB

Selenium is an essential micronutrient that prevents heavy metal toxicity in the human body. The Group of Separation Techniques in Chemistry at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has added seleniun to the soil of plants like wheat in order to increase the level of selenium in the plant, so that it can reach the people who consume it. To validate this project, they used the Alba Synchrotron facilites and the conclusions were, as Manuel Valiente has explained at the Smart Agrifood Industry Expo:
1. Different substrate enrichment conditions give different selenium speciation and distribution in wheat 2. Distribution studies are essential
3. Increased toxicity exposure increment Se Methione production and accumulation in grain.

“SmarTack, adhesives that increase shelf life of packaged food”
Esteve Valls, Technical Manager of Samtack Industrial Adhesives
Read the presentation here.

Esteve Valls Rovira from Samtack Industrial Adhesives has explained that they have developed SmarTack, a new adhesive technology for flexible multilayer comlexes with antioxidant properties and they used ALBA Synchrotron light to validate this new product. Packaging manufactured with such multilayer films allows an increased food shelf life.

“BCB Monitor 4.0 in the food industry”
Mariel Gallardo, Commercial Director of BCB Informática y control
Read the presentation here.

BCB Informática y Control is expert in data acquisition systems and machine vision. Continuous and inline temperature monitoring is an ideal tool for a food company because it is non destructive, non invasive, contactless, with high precision and repeatibity, as Mariel Gallardo has explained during her speech. She has also presented the bcbMonitor, a monitoring system for production processes and critical equipment that uses infrared thermography technology that allows the monitoring of Raw Materials in Storage Silos, Cooking and Baking Inspection, Filling Level, Detection of Foreign Bodies in dried fruits and coffee beans by active thermography, among others.

“Polyspectral and SWIR imaging applied to food and agriculture”
Juan Luis Vadillo, Sales Director of Iberoptics
Read his presentation here.

Precision Farming needs technologies like the ones that Juan Luis Vadillo has presented during the congress of Smart Agrifood Industry. For example, SILIOS Technologies can be embedded in drones to monitor planthealth or biomass, early disease detection as well as food quality and safety.

“INESCUBE: the smart artificial eye for the Agrifood sector”
Daniel Kumpel, CEO of IOVI Intelligent Vision
Read the presentation here.

Daniel has presented INESCUBE, an intelligent artificial eye that integrates all its components into a single product with multiple applications for the agrifood sector like: Brix degree measurement in fruit, volumetric measurement, defect detection, detection of the chemical quality of packaged and fresh fruits, detection of aflatoxin or discrimination between fruit and other external agents.

“SHEALTHY – Non-thermal physical technologies to preserve healthiness of fruit and vegetables”
Elena Torrieri, Associate Professor at University of Naple Federico II & Marco de la Feld, Senior Project Manager of ENCO S.r.l
Read here the presentation.

The Shealthy Project develops non-thermal processing technologies aiming to destroy foodborne pathogens while preserving freshness, nutritional and sensorial aspects of food product. The project develops bioactive coatings and active packagings that sanitizate and preservate food, as Elena Torrieri and Marco de la Feld have explained during the first session of the Smart Agrifood Industry Expo.

“At-line sensor system for tomatoes quality monitoring”
Alberto Villar, Researcher at Tekniker

Alberto has presented the Meditomato Project, an at-line sensor system based on Vis-NIR spectroscopy for real-time monitoring of tomato quality. The project covers the whole tomato value chain (from agricultural production to fresh product, processing and distribution) enabling this sector to progress at different levels of development and contributing to a consistent rural and social development of the Mediterranean agrifood sector.

The second block of the Smart Agrifood Industry Congress has been a great opportunity to meet the AgriPhotonics ZIM Network partners and to listen to experts from the agtech and foodtech fields.

“Introduction AgriPhotonics ZIM Network”
Janina Bolling | OpTecBB & Shlomo Glazer | Photonics Israel
Read Janina’s presentation here and Sholomo’s presentation here.

The AgriPhotonics ZIM Network connects German and Israeli organisations that collect data of plant material for knowledge-based and sustainable plant production using optical methods and photonic technologies.

“Extraction of temporal plant information using 3D LiDAR data in apple trees”
Nikos Tsoulias | Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Engineering and Bio-economy
Read the presentation here.

During his speech “Extraction of temporal plant information using 3D LiDAR data in apple trees”, Nikos Tsoulias has explained that the implementation of geometric and radiometric features in three-dimensional space analysis can improve the fruit detection. In this study, a light detection and range LiDAR system was used to scan apple trees before and after defoliation, four times during seasonal tree growth. And the conclusion of the study points to the high capacity of LiDAR variables to localize fruit and estimate its size by means of remote sensing.

“Mobile Apps in Precision Horticulture”
Manuela Zude-Sasse | Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Engineering and Bio-economy
Read the presentation here.

Manuela Zude-Sasse has presented several Mobile Apps for Precision Horticulture that, combined with site-specific technologies like sensors or drones, may have applications such as planning the best harvest date, mapping the soluble solids content in citrus, chlorophyll decrease or carotenoids accumulation.
Since many horticultural crops are in small fields in the major part of the world, Manuela has also pointed out that site-specific technologies should be developed and they must be economically viable and easy for small farmers to adopt.

“CNN algorithm for single and overall weight estimation of melons using UAV images” Dr. Iftach Klapp | ARO Volcani Center
Read the presentation here.

Dr. Iftach Klapp has explained how his team has developed a robust algorithm that detects melons in an agricultural environment using UAV images for yield estimation.
The CNN algorithm based system includes three main stages: melon detection, feature extraction, yield estimation and has provided promising results.

“The Volcani Institute – Research activities in postharvest technologies and food science” Dr. Ron Porat | ARO Volcani Center
Read the presentation here.

Ron Porat has described some of the research activities conducted in Volcani Institute. At the Dept. of Postharvest Science, the research areas are: ripening and senescence, postharvest decay control, chilling stress, sensory and nutritional quality. The research areas of the Dept. of Food Science include: chemical and microbial food safety, agronanotechnology measures for smart packaging, grain storage, health and nutritious foods.

“Optical methods for the agricultural and food industry”
Claudia Pacholski | University of Potsdam

Light technologies for process analytics in food industry can be used for determining the concentration or the particle size of the elements. Some use cases are enzyme induced gelling in cheese production, the mashing process of beer, or inline characterisation of high cell density fermentation. On the other hand, the application of biosensors and fibre optics in the agrifood value chain can be also used to study the degradation of microplastic in soil -and its subsequent entry into the food chain-, by analysing the composition of soil wit IR spectroscopy.

“Remote sensing of plant physiology – an intersection of machine learning, remote sensing and photosynthesis” Oded Liran | MIGAL Galilee Research Institute
Read here the presentation.

The NDVI index was originally invented to track seasonal changes in vegetation satellites images, but it is not accurate when it comes to address agricultural challenges. And this is where plant physiology comes in. A discipline which studies chemical reactions that change with time like photosynthesis, germination, transpiration or ripening. However, outside a controlled environment measurements are getting tricky and it requires the intervention of technologies like remote sensing spectroscopy, chemometrics, machine learning or data science. The group of Agrophysics studies of the MIGAL Galilee Research Institue, is focused in the application of machine learning and remote sensing to monitor plant physiology to enable a better Precision Agriculture.

“Spectral Imaging in the Food Processing Industry”
Valentin Regir | LLA Instruments GmbH & Co. KG
Read the presentation here.

Valentin Regir has presented a push-broom type of spectral cameras designed by LLA Instruments and a control software and calibration model development. Today’s demands in quality and safety within the food processing industries result in increasing numbers of applications, of which a selection is highlighted, utilizing spectral imaging as innovative, high-end technology.

The afternoon of the second congress day was dedicated to Startup Pitches with presentations of cutting-edge and pioneering technologies from the foodtech and agtech field. Check out the startup pitch decks below:

The winner of the Smart Agrifood Industry Startup Awards was OneThird from the Netherlands!

This is only the beginning and we look forward to innovating the agrifood value chain with all you! Join our continuous Smart Agrifood lndustry programme of several more segmented sessions in a different format taking place in autumn 2021. This will allow us to achieve more visibility, business and collaboration opportunities for the Smart Agrifood Industry Community. Stay tuned!

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