SenSpores

The aim of this project is to minimise spoilage, and hence waste, of food by developing new sensor strategies for rapid detection of fungal and bacterial spores in liquid food.

The main objective of the SenSpores project is to further develop a sensor technology developed within Maastricht University and Ruhr-Universteit Bochum. This biosensor technology is able to detect contamination quickly and easily. This enables food producers to routinely pre-screen their products and prevent the spread of contamination. This can affect the whole value chain because contamination can occur anywhere both at harvesting, and during production but also when packaging and transporting these products. Additionally, this will improve the sustainability of the production process because such technology can detect contamination in a more targeted way so that any structural sources of contamination can be adjusted.

The project is funded by the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund through Interreg VI Deutschland-Nederland (€1,342,556.46 EU grant). Additional funding is provided by MWIKE NRW (€287,690.67), the Province of Limburg (€115,076.29) and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate (€172,614.42).