Building collaborative research in developing smart sensing systems

Hyderabad: The city's Institution of Eminence, University of Hyderabad (UoH), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Indian Council of Agricultural Research-National Research Centre on Meat (ICAR-NRCM) and Elvikon India Pvt. Ltd on Thursday.

The main objective of the collaboration is to digitalise the 'best before date' of the packaged foods, especially meat products, thereby addressing not only the meat waste but also increasing food safety for consumption. The current proposal by an industry-academia consortium is to develop the smart sensor by integrating hardware components and an application for providing real-time quality information to consumers.

Elvikon (industry partner) provides sensor technology and knowhow, formulation of the sensor ink and integration of hardware components and makes the demonstrator prototype, while the academic partner: UoH finalises the specifications required for hardware integration of the smart sensor, and provides customized mobile APP for digitalization of the best before date, and ICAR-NRCM identifies key volatile compounds and calibration of sensor by correlation of the sensor response and meat bacteria under different storage and packing conditions. Furthermore, the smart sensor can warn the user about potential temperature breachings or mishandling during shipment and storage, which could jeopardize food safety notwithstanding the label's specified expiration or use-by date.