Food Screening EMR is an Interreg V Euregion Meuse-Rhine project aimed at supporting regional agrifood SMEs in their transition to a more sustainable, future-proof business model. The project will focus on three separate areas: integrating sensor technology into agricultural value chains, building food and health claims to improve product placement, and exploring new cultivation techniques that deliver healthier food crops.
The Food Screening EMR project is funded with € 953,040.03 by the EU European Regional Development Fund through Interreg Euregio Meuse-Rhine. Additional € 377,000.00 by co-financing from Province of Limburg (Netherlands), the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate (Netherlands), Region Wallonia (Belgium) and the state government (Landesregierung) of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany). Project website ‘INTERREG Food Screening EMR’
Objective
In this project, Yookr will collaborate with 4 universities (Maastricht University (main project partner), Hasselt University, RWTH Aachen and University of Liège) and with IMEC vzw and other regional SME ZUMOlab GmbH to develop a handheld platform for on-site nutrient sensing. This will provide end users with valuable insights on how this sensor technology can be implemented in the agricultural value chain, among others. The Food Claims Centre Venlo and UM’s Plant Envirogenetics group will collaborate with BASF Vegetable Seeds and Brightlands Campus Greenport to help SMEs by teaching them how to integrate new cultivation methods to create healthier food crops and make food and health claims on these products to improve their product placement in the market. To ensure that all activities in the project are relevant to the Euroregional agrifood industry, the consortium includes strategic partners from the field such as Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo and BASF Vegetable Seeds. In addition, local SMEs and larger companies seeking support in one of the three domains covered by the consortium can join the user group and help steer the activities in the various work packages. The project “Food Screening EMR – New Tools for Sustainabley Producing Healthy Food Crops” is an international and multidisciplinary collaboration with nine project partners from the Euregion. Leading partner is Maastricht University. Other partners include RWTH Aachen University, Hasselt University, Liège Université, Yookr B.V., Nunhems Netherlands BV, Imec, Zumo Lab and Brightlands.
