Integration of Innovative Technologies in the Agri-Food Sector: The Fundamentals and Practical Case of DNA-Based Traceability of Olives from Fruit to Oil

Abstract

Several socio-economic problems have been hidden by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Particularly, the agricultural and food industrial sectors have been harshly affected by this devastating disease. Moreover, with the worldwide population increase and the agricultural production technologies being inefficient or obsolete, there is a great need to find new and successful ways to fulfill the increasing food demand. A new era of agriculture and food industry is forthcoming, with revolutionary concepts, processes and technologies, referred to as Agri-food 4.0, which enables the next level of agri-food production and trade. In addition, consumers are becoming more and more aware about the origin, traceability, healthy and high-quality of agri-food products. The integration of new process of production and data management is a mandatory step to meet consumer and market requirements. DNA traceability may provide strong approach to certify and authenticate healthy food products, particularly for olive oil. With this approach, the origin and authenticity of products are confirmed by the means of unique nucleic acid sequences. Selected tools, methods and technologies involved in and contributing to the advance of the agri-food sector are presented and discussed in this paper. Moreover, the application of DNA traceability as an innovative approach to authenticate olive products is reported in this paper as an application and promising case of smart agriculture.

Seeding innovation: the role of internal and external digital data in agri-food product innovation

“…, 2020). IoT involves the integration of sensors into tangible objects, allowing them to connect to wireless networks using the Internet Protocol (Ben Ayed et al. , 2022).…”

Birth of dairy 4.0: Opportunities and challenges in adoption of fourth industrial revolution technologies in the production of milk and its derivatives

“…Big Data (BD) - BD refers to extremely large and complex data sets that cannot be analysed or processed using traditional methods ( Ayed et al, 2022 ). Big Data Analytics (BDA) is the process of using advanced analytical tools and techniques to process these massive data sets ( Ciccullo et al, 2022 ).…”

Emerging trends in the agri-food sector: Digitalisation and shift to plant-based diets

“…There are also some applications of BD focused on driving demand and meeting consumer needs for plant-based foods, such as developing new smart fruit marketing models in e-commerce ( Ma and Zhang, 2022 ), satisfying date consumers through an automatic image classification system based on 5G technology and deep learning ( Hossain et al, 2018 ), and generating a healthy food recommendation for the end-user in a nutrition-based vegetable system ( Ludena and Ahrary, 2016 ). There is another group of BD applications that cut across the entire agri-food chain, including certifying the quality of olive oil, one of the star products of the Mediterranean diet, using DNA traceability techniques in combination with 4.0 technologies including BD ( Ben Ayed et al, 2022 ), improving dynamic risk management associated to food-borne pathogens leafy vegetables ( Donaghy et al, 2021 ), improving food quality and safety inspection (including fruit) through deep learning ( Chen and Yu, 2022 ; Zhou et al, 2019 ), improving the taste of vegetables by integrating metabolic profiling with other omics methodologies derived from BD ( Zhu et al, 2019 ), and assessing the quality of fruits and vegetables using techniques such as computer vision, image processing and hyperspectral imaging ( Bandal and Thirugnanam, 2016 ).…”