Crop growers now have the opportunity to measure the nutritious quality of their produce, providing real health benefits to consumers
date: 13/06/2022
The Euroregio Maas Rhine European cross-border programme is helping European companies and knowledge institutes to develop a biosensor, which growers can use to measure their fruit and vegetables' vitamin content. The research is part of the Interreg project ‘Food Screening EMR’, which involves partners from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.
Fruit and vegetable farmers will be able not only to measure but also to increase the nutritional value of their crops through state-of-the-art techniques and cultivation methods being developed by the EMR-funded project.
The University of Maastricht (the Netherlands), Aachen University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and the Universities of Liège and Hasselt (Belgium) have come together to work on modifying a bio-sensor which was initially developed to detect drugs but which will now be used to detect vitamins in crops. While it is technically to do so using current technology, it is prohibitively expensive for most crop growers. Using a cheaper sensor would enable growers to routinely measure the nutritional value of their crops and help them to determine in a routine manner the correct cultivation methods to maximise the vitamin content of their produce. These prestigious universities are accompanied by software developers closely cooperating on a cross-border basis in a part of the European Union renowned for both the quality and significance of its horticultural output.
More information on this project can be found on the following link from hortidaily.com