The agrifood sector is a strategic asset of all Countries, with particular social relevance: it is of crucial importance to ensure sufficient food production to citizens, and vital to ensure employment, preserve rural public goods, supply healthy and quality products, including sustainable and secure production and distribution chains. It has also to facilitate the enhancement of competitiveness and sustainability approach of SMEs into the food chain, while quality, safety, and traceability being key elements.
It is essential to consider all factors affecting food quality & safety, from farm to fork, thus making health converge into a unicum as a system by applying the “One Health” approach. Well-balanced and sustainable agroecosystems & agrifood systems can highly contribute to the well-being and security of the human-animal-plant capitals, while increasing the capacity of handling and managing their complex system of interdependencies. Sustainable agrifood systems are key to attain the UN SDGs. An important aspect of sustainability is the agroecological transformation of the whole food value chain from farm to fork, as well as to improve resilience of supply chains, the vulnerability of which has been highlighted during the recent pandemic and war crises. In this context, diets must not only be healthy but also sustainable, as the food choices have significant relapses on individuals, the society, and the environment. They can concretely influence the future of humans on the planet. Dietary patterns must therefore interpret health protection and food choices as integrated components of the overall health of the ecosystem. Another key element is the promotion of integrated traceability systems, enhancing the digitalization of the agrifood system in support of transparency. The data infrastructure should comply with the FAIR principle (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable), should be interoperable with other data repositories, access to data repositories should be federated and data quality must be maintained and improved.
Research Infrastructures (RIs) play a strategic role and have the capacity to assemble resources (equipment, data, knowledge) and services for the agrifood sector (including research communities) on a long-term basis both within EU and globally. In this context, RIs are the best positioned not only to address societal challenges, but also to provide turnkey solutions for citizens, policy makers and industry. In particular, METROFOOD-RI
- Infrastructure for Promoting Metrology in Food and Nutrition is a distributed RI aimed to promote scientific excellence in the field of food quality and safety. It provides high-quality metrology services in food and nutrition, comprising an important cross-section of highly interdisciplinary and interconnected fields throughout the food value chain, including agrifood, sustainable development, food safety, quality, traceability and authenticity, environmental safety, and human health.
The session will underscore the role of Research Infrastructure in approaching agrifood system challenges with reference, e.g., to food quality & safety, traceability & transparency, innovation, digitalization, circular bioeconomy, sustainability, and resilience, represent the occasion to debate about the relevance of boosting research, cooperation, innovation, and stakeholder engagement in support to the agrifood.
Speakers 
Head of Editorial Engagement, MDPI
Damaris holds a bachelor’s degree with honours in Philosophy and a master’s in European Philosophy from the University of the West of England (UWE) Bristol, UK.Before joining MDPI, Damaris worked as a Journal Manager at Frontiers, where she was responsible for the performance...
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Researcher - METROFOOD-RI Coordinator, claudia.zoani@enea.it
Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) - Dept. for Sustainability - Sustainable AgriFood Systems Division (SSPT-AGROS)Researcher at the ENEA Sustainable AgriFood Systems Division, graduated in Chemistry with a PhD in Analytical...
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Sciensano
Joris Van Loco is a prominent scientist working at Sciensano, the Belgian institute for health. With a robust background in analytical chemistry, Van Loco has made significant contributions to public health through his research and expertise. At Sciensano, he focuses on ensuring food...
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Jozef Stefan Institute (JSI)
Prof. dr. Nives Ogrinc received her PhD degree from the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology University of Ljubljana in 1997. Prof. Ogrinc obtained a NATO-postdoctoral fellowship from 2000-2002 in the Department of Chemistry at Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada...
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Czech University of Life Sciences (CZU)
- Team member of grants: NutRisk Centre (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000845); GA 21-42021L; GA 21-47159L- Sardines and sprats as a potentional source of nutrients required for supporting proper function of immune system in in vitro and in vivo models. GA 21-42021L- INPROFF: Quality...
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Premotec
Dr. Karl Presser is the founder of Premotec. He trained as a computer scientist and earned his doctoral degree at ETH Zurich investigating data quality on food composition data focusing on basic principles of data quality and how a computer system can support users to manage data...
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National Metrology Institute of South Africa (NMISA)
Dr. Maria Fernandes-Whaley is the Senior Manager of Analytical and Material Sciences in the Chemistry, Materials, and Medical Metrology Division at the National Metrology Institute of South Africa.She is a seasoned professional with an 18-year career in chemical metrology. Her expertise...
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Institutul national de cercetare-dezvoltare pentru bioresurse alimentare (IBA)
Nastasia Belc, Director General of National Research Institute for Food Bioresources - IBA. She is food senior scientist, PhD, and professor to the Faculty of Biotechnology within University of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine, in Bucharest. She is member of Romanian Academy for Agricultural...
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