PhasmaFOOD: the mini-portable smart system for on-the-spot food-quality sensing & shelf-life prediction — from idea to prototype! PhasmaFOOD showcased its first results at the 8th International Symposium on Recent Advances in Food Analysis (RAFA 2017) © PhasmaFOOD The RAFA symposium, held in Prague from 7 to 10 November, offered significant networking opportunities for the hundreds of food scientists and practitioners who convened in the Czech Republic for this exciting event. The symposium, featuring diverse expertise in the field of food analysis, regulation and hardware development, attracted more than 750 representatives from about 50 countries: food scientists from academia and industry, national and international agencies, control authorities and governmental and commercial laboratories. RAFA 2017 was organised by the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague and the Institute of Food Safety (RIKILT) at Wageningen University and Research (Netherlands). PhasmaFOOD was represented at the event by partners from the Agricultural University of Athens (AUA) (Greece), the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (IPMS) (Germany) and RIKILT. A special session on 'Smart portable and personalized food analysis systems' was organised by the Horizon 2020 projects PhasmaFOOD and FoodSmartphone. The session was particularly successful, attracting around 200 attendees. The main PhasmaFOOD presentation, prepared by INTRASOFT International and RIKILT and presented by Yannick Weesepoel (RIKILT), outlined the goals of the project and highlighted its technological potential. Susanne Hintschich (Fraunhofer) announced the first results of the NIR spectroscopy and casing design for the PhasmaFOOD prototype, while Lemonia Fengou (AUA) reported the first results on the evaluation of spectroscopy- and imaging-based sensors for the use case of food spoilage. RAFA spotlights the introduction of EU projects to the wider scientific community, and the 'Smart Lab' demonstration sessions provided an excellent opportunity for discussion and brief demonstrations of the developed ideas and prototypes. PhasmaFOOD and EU projects FoodSmartphone and FoodIntegrity arranged the two-day Smart Lab sessions. PhasmaFOOD provided demonstrations* on measuring the alcohol content in beverages while collecting invaluable feedback on the project idea and vision, software/hardware issues and use cases from industry representatives, regulators, academia and hardware producers. Smart Lab visitors were invited to subscribe as PhasmaFOOD followers for regular progress and activity updates, and to become involved in the project by providing feedback to the PhasmaFOOD consortium. More information: - PhasmaFOOD: http://www.phasmafood.eu - RAFA 2017: http://www.rafa2017.eu - FoodSmartphone: http://www.foodsmartphone.eu - FoodIntegrity: http://www.foodintegrity.eu * PhasmaFOOD demonstrations were performed using a SCiO device Keywords food safety, sensor, food security, demonstration, RAFA Countries Belgium, Czechia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Serbia
