Universty of Reading: Reducing Food Loss at the primary production stage

The University of Reading is a partner in an EU funded project, FOLOU, that is investigating the potential of innovative technologies to facilitate the systemic transition of EU food systems by setting up the necessary mechanisms to:
• measure and estimate food losses at primary production stage
• monitor and report food losses at Member State and European levels
• assess the magnitude and impact of Food Losses, and identify key drivers

New cost-effective tools for the measurement/estimation of food losses will be developed along with a robust and harmonized quantification methodology for five main commodity groups. The FOLOU project will investigate the potential of the following six innovative applications of agritechnologies:
o RGB cameras on UAVs to enable direct estimates of fruit and vegetables unfit for human consumption
o RGB video cameras embedded on tractors to detect and localise weeds
o Satellite and UAV images to estimate food losses in case study arable crops
o An automatic system for removal of dead eggs from fish farming systems using multi-spectral cameras and robotic arms
o Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies to estimate food losses in cold chains
o Use of big data and AI to estimate consumers’ demand shifts

The University of Reading will develop a series of educational training courses and workshops to bring the outcomes from the FOLOU project to a range of audiences. For further information about the project, please get in touch with Alice Mauchline (a.l.mauchline@reading.ac.uk).