Digital Food Quality (DigiFoods) is a Centre for Research-based Innovation (SFI) bringing together research organisations, universities, technology providers and food producers to develop sensor technologies and digital solutions for more efficient, sustainable and data-driven food production.
SINTEF leads the research pillar Novel sensor systems and application development, focusing on new technologies for rapid and robust food quality assessment.
New sensor systems for food quality assessment
Food products are complex, heterogeneous and variable, and many important quality parameters are difficult to measure rapidly in intact products during production. In DigiFoods, SINTEF develops and tests spectroscopic sensor systems, with a particular focus on compact sensors for challenging field and industrial applications. Examples include near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy for measuring sugar content in strawberries directly on the plant, dry matter in whole potatoes and water content in dried salt-cured cod (clipfish), as well as monitoring of enzymatic protein hydrolysis using dry-film FTIR spectroscopy.
The work builds on more than 20 years of research and development in sensor technologies for food quality assessment at SINTEF, in close collaboration with the Norwegian food research institute Nofima.
Read more about SINTEF's research on advanced spectroscopic sensors for food quality assessment.
From research to new technology
Research in DigiFoods has also laid the foundation for further development and commercialisation of new technology. One example is SenseInside – non-contact measurement of internal food quality, which is now being taken forward through a dedicated commercialisation project.
Many of SINTEF's optical and spectroscopic sensor systems are developed and characterised in the SINTEF Sensor Systems Lab.
