RESFOOD General Assembly in Delft: Halfway passed, mid-term results on the table

During the RESFOOD General Assembly on 7th May at the TNO premises in Delft, The Netherlands, the project partners presented and discussed the mid-term results of their research activities which aim to develop integrated technologies to close the water cycle in food production and procession without concessions in food safety and quality.

The project is at its halfway now and during the remaining period of the project until 2015, the partners will intensify their efforts on pilot tests to demonstrate the results they achieved so far in the laboratories, this time in the real situation at the production units and processing lines of the industry partners of the project.

RESFOOD Project coordinator Willy van Tongeren said that the collaboration between partners is very productive so far and the project is evolving towards a more practical point from now on with more focus on pilot demonstrations.

The project partners working in horticulture technologies already proved in their preliminary tests that it is possible to reduce over 40% of the water consumption maintaining the same fruit quality and yield in soilless cultivation. This will be further tested during the next cultivation season by the Spanish research partner ADESVA in close collaboration with the blackberry producer Agricola el Bosque.

On the other hand, based on the findings of the research partners on water treatment, disinfection and detection in food processing, a prototype machinery will be set-up by equipment supplier Kronen to be tested in real situation at fresh cut producer Vezet.

In the field of biomass recovery, VITO is checking the feasibility of valorising some valuable compounds recovered from the food industry by-products, with the support from Provalor.

The RESFOOD project keeps its close ties with the industry to ensure that the technologies offered are feasible and relevant for the market. With a similar aim, the General Assembly meeting was followed by the RESFOOD Info Session on Horticulture that was organized on 8th May at Demokwekerij to share and discuss the project results and insights with the industry.

For more information on the info session:
http://www.resfood.eu/web/news/infosessiondemokwekerij/

Countries

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, United Kingdom