Project description
Food safety and green solutions
With the world’s population growing and climate change intensifying, food safety is critical. Contaminants like mycotoxins and plant toxins pose risks to human health, contributing to foodborne illnesses and chronic diseases. These toxins threaten public health and cause substantial losses in agriculture and aquaculture. Testing methods, which are reliant on hazardous solvents, also harm the environment. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the GreenFOCUS project aims to change this by developing sustainable, eco-friendly methods for detecting a range of natural toxins in food. By using green solvents and analytical techniques like high-resolution mass spectrometry, the project will offer environmentally friendly solutions, paving the way for safer and more sustainable food systems.
Objective
Food safety is still a challenge considering climate change and growing global population. Human exposure to contaminated food lead to numerous health risks including foodborne and chronic diseases. Natural toxins such as mycotoxins, plant toxins, and phytotoxins, play a significant role in food contamination, causing substantial losses in the agriculture and aquaculture sectors. Additionally, their co-occurrence in food samples together with the potential presence of masked or unexpected toxins can have synergistic and unknown toxic effects, posing emerging risks to human health. Current analytical methods to monitor these contaminants require high consume of hazardous organic solvents and generate significant waste, having a considerable environmental impact. Furthermore, most standard protocols target a limited range of compounds, reducing the scope of the analysis.
GreenFOCUS aims to develop a sustainable, green analytical methodology for detecting multiple classes of natural toxins in food and food supplements. The project proposes the use of eco-friendly solvents to replace harmful organic solvents and biodegradable materials to reduce plastic waste. Advanced analytical techniques such as cyclic ion mobility coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry will be explored to reduce total time of analysis and to expand the detection scope using non-target and suspect screening workflows. The development of a new metric tool (Eco-GATE) considering green, white and circular analytical chemistry will allow to assess the greenness and transferability of analytical methods, aiming to develop and implement sustainable methodologies in food analysis.
The method will be validated in European reference laboratories and within the food industry to demonstrate its real-word applicability. In general, GreenFOCUS aims to transform food safety systems across public and private sectors, ensuring a safer and more sustainable future for food systems.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries fisheries
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering control systems
- engineering and technology other engineering and technologies food technology food safety
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic changes
- natural sciences chemical sciences analytical chemistry mass spectrometry
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
6708 PB Wageningen
Netherlands
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.