Hyderabad
Most consumers of food products today look at two important data points on the packaging — date of manufacture and expiry or best-before date. This is done essentially to ensure freshness and quality. For the manufacturer, it’s an important message and also mandatory as per regulations.
In one interesting development to digitalize the best-before date of packaged food, especially meat products, a public-private partnership (PPP) has been forged in Hyderabad.
The University of Hyderabad (UoH) has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research - National Research Centre on Meat (ICAR-NRCM) and the private sector Elvikon India Limited recently.
The objective is to address the twin objectives of improving food safety for consumption of packaged foods, especially meat products, and managing meat wastes.
Under the agreement, the private partner, Elvikon, will provide the sensor technology and the relevant know-how. It will enable to make the demonstrator product called a ‘Smart sensor’, which will provide real-time information to the consumers.
The company will provide the formulation of the sensor ink and the integration of the necessary hardware components for the purpose. The UoH will finalize the specifications required for the hardware integration of the smart sensor and provide a customized mobile app for the digitalization of the best-before date.
The ICAR-NRCM will identify key volatile compounds and calibration of the sensor by the correlation of the sensor response and meat bacteria under different storage and packing conditions. Further, the smart sensor can warn the user about potential temperature breaching or mishandling during shipment and storage, which could jeopardize food safety notwithstanding the label’s specified expiration or use-by date.
The MoU was signed by Dr Devesh Nigam (Registrar of UoH), Dr SB Barbuddhe (Director, ICAR-NRCM), and Dr A Rambabu (Director, Elvikon India Pvt. Ltd) in the presence of Prof. BJ Rao, Vice-Chancellor, UoH.