Summary of the presentations

The first day of the Smart Agrifood Industry Expo has been challenging
and we want to thank all the attendees and speakers for your trust and patience. During the congress sessions we had the chance to discover future technology and innovation trends, here you can read the highlights of the speeches:

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.

LinkedIn Profile

Ricardo Diaz, Head of Smart Automatisation Department of AINIA

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.

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Iker García, CEO of AOTECH

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.

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Marta Ávila, Industrial Office Scientist of Alba Synchrotron

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.

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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:
- Different substrate enrichment conditions give different selenium speciation and distribution in wheat
- Distribution studies are essential
- Increased toxicity exposure increment SeMethione production and accumulation in grain.

Esteve Valls, Technical Manager of Samtack Industrial Adhesives

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.

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Mariel Gallardo, Commercial Director of BCB Informática y control

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.

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Juan Luis Vadillo, Sales Director of Iberoptics

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.

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Daniel Kumpel, CEO of IOVI Intelligent Vision

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.

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Marco de la Feld, Senior Project Manager of ENCO S.r.l & Elena Torrieri, Associate Professor at University of Naple Federico II

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.

Elena's Linkedin Profile &  Marco's LinkedIn Profile

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.

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