An integrated toolbox for improved verification and prevention of adulterations and non-compliances in organic and geographical indications food supply chain
Overview
Moving towards a sustainable food system is vital for achieving a climate-neutral Europe by 2050, with organic farming playing a key role in promoting environmentally friendly practices, circularity, and animal welfare. However, organic and geographical indication (GI) products face significant challenges from fraud and adulteration, including mislabelling, dilution, unapproved enhancement, concealment, and substitution, driven by economic gain. Traceability and product integrity are often compromised during handling and processing, while consumer awareness about organic standards remains limited, undermining trust. Current heterogeneous, manual control systems lack continuity, necessitating digital solutions like blockchain and AI to enhance transparency, inspection efficiency, and certification.
THEROS aims to modernise the verification and protection of organic and GI food products by developing an integrated, technology-driven toolbox. Using innovations such as Earth Observation, photonics, IoT, DNA testing, AI, and blockchain, THEROS will enable efficient fraud detection, quality monitoring, and secure traceability. The project will also provide platforms for data harmonisation and validation across the supply chain, along with user-friendly interfaces to support inspections, policy-making, and business models for short supply chains. The toolbox will be tested in real-world settings through pilot demonstrations in Serbia, Greece, Spain, and the Czech Republic, addressing diverse products, fraud cases, and stakeholder needs.
Objectives
Improve detection of adulterations and non-compliances in the organic and geographic indications food products, including efficient monitoring of quality and sustainability parameters through low-cost, digital and scalable solutions.
Enhance traceability in the quality labelled food supply chain via novel technologies and approaches that will ensure secure and transparent data governance across the whole value chain.
Ensure efficient management and harmonisation of data collected from the different stages of the supply chain, enable their uptake for improved decision making and assure interoperability and integration with existing systems.
Assess and formulate new business-oriented models and approaches towards preventing quality-labelled food adulteration as well as increasing awareness and quality assurance.
Validate and demonstrate the effectiveness of the THEROS integrated toolbox through four validation campaigns that will pave the way for rapid uptake of the proposed systemic innovations.
eBOS Role in the Project
eBOS will design, develop and integrate the graphical Human Machine Interface (HMI) of THEROS toolbox. The HMI will allow the efficient monitoring of activities taking place in the organic and geographic indications supply chain for improved decision-making by policymakers and supply chain actors. Furthermore, eBOS will implement artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques for verifying the origin and quality of food products based on their DNA footprint.
Parallel to its technical tasks, eBOS will also act as the project’s Quality Assurance and Risk Manager, implementing quality assurance procedures and ensuring that proactive measures are taken to mitigate risks. Finally, eBOS will lead the project’s exploitation activities by developing the market-entry preparation plans and the post-project sustainability strategy. Tailored business model(s) will be developed, to carry forward the commercialisation of the Key Exploitable Results and their market entry.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
