“The Revolutionary Real Time AgroFood Contaminant Screener” is the name of the project from Next Generation Sensors B.V. and CIED B.V.in the Netherlands. And the project aims to develop exactly that: a portable real-time scanner for contamination in food production.

The project will begin with the dairy industry, which is the second-largest sector in the agri-food testing market. Meat and fruit/vegetable companies – and food/feed companies in general – will follow rapidly after the product launch.

The Lab-to-Sample project will enable the consortium to deliver an unprecedented portable contaminant screener. The development of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) allows the partners to rapidly commercialise their joint innovation. The proposed screener’s underlying technologies are an unparalleled portable mass spectrometer, a novel rapid sampling probe, a novel blockchain ledger and machine learning algorithms.

Accurate, real-time contamination detection at the source would 1) prevent contamination extension because of milk pooling, significantly reducing food waste, 2) reduce analysis costs and 3) drastically reduce the need for costly food recalls.

Next Generation Sensors B.V. + CIED B.V. are also collaborating with The Maastricht MultiModal Molecular Imaging Institute (M4I).

Final report summary
Our vision is to predict how much we can trust our food. This project has developed SPOTDETECT, a low-cost portable mass spectrometer which:

• replaces time-consuming lab testing for contaminants
• enables lab-quality identification of contaminants earlier in the process
• reduces food waste
• reduces the risk of expensive product recalls
• saves on analysis costs

SPOTDETECT provides a user interface for non-technical users, quantfication algorithms and blockchain architecture, enabling users to trace contamination to the source.

During the project, we found that another sort of device than originally anticipated is an option. So we have broadened our technical roadmap. As a result, an additional device is now in the proof of concept phase. The project has also brought us into contact with potential customers in Spain, and we have set up a validation facility in Wageningen, The Netherlands and in Spain for tomatoes and olives. In June 2022, we were invited to demonstrate the device to aquaculture and seafood companies in India.