Strengthening of the Italian Research Infrastructure for Metrology and Open Access Data in support to the Agrifood
Mission
To support research and innovation in the agrifood by providing integrated services, boosting the digitalization of agrifood systems and their efficiency, traceability, and sustainability, increasing the reliability of products and processes and information provided to citizens, authorities, and food system actors.
METROFOOD-IT will promote the acceleration of scientific discovery, innovation and competitiveness, growth and jobs, economic and social cohesion. It will contribute to a new research approach that allows metrological data flows through networks in a way that will facilitate trade, competitiveness, quality and consumer satisfaction of food and nutrition data at the national level, but also in Europe and beyond. The RI will foster competitiveness in the Food & Health domain in many ways, especially through its unique technical and scientific offer. Some practical examples:
- The attribution of quality indexes to food is a key element to address and benefit the research in the food industry, as well as to promote products through the assignment of trademarks to protect origin.
- Considering agricultural techniques at a low environmental impact or biological agriculture, the knowledge of nutritional and health characteristics, apart from the verification of contamination absence, can better support the attribution of added value to products.
- The RI operation can aid the agrifood industries, particularly SMEs, to solve their issues applying innovative technologies to successfully reach the market.
- The RI can permit to enforce consumers’ trust and awareness, and the establishment of a virtuous circle of supply and demand, which contribute to the promotion of production authenticity and quality.
Positive outcomes are also related to the accessibility, collection and reliability of big data, with advantages in terms of: reduced costs, improvement of data quality and integrity, availability of reliable data in real-time; reduction in the time between action and monitoring; building of public trust in the data, and expansion of the people’s ability to use them.