Articolo disponibile anche in: Italian

A photonic technology for a revolutionary label. No more secrets for olive oil.

This is the new project born from the collaboration between Italy and Israel, which sees the involvement of the Istituto di Fisica Applicata (Institute of Applied Physics) “Nello Carrara” in Sesto Fiorentino (represented by PhD Anna Grazia Mignani and PhD Leonardo Ciaccheri), an olive oil company affiliated with Anga – Giovani Confagricoltura Toscana and Verifood LTD, an Israeli technological company which is at the forefront in the design, production and marketing of scanners based on spectroscopic technologies.

The project, presented a few weeks ago in Lausanne during the Optical Fiber Sensors convention, was realised thanks to the Ministero per gli Affari Esteri e Cooperazione Internazionale (Ministry for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation).

The new technology makes it possible to put a code on the label that looks like a classic Qrcode, but goes far beyond the common mobile marketing tool which is limited to information on quality, provenance and production techniques.

QR4OIL, on the other hand, contains specific nutritional information on bottled olive oil and gives an immediate analysis of the product, without the need for chemical processes that could alter or destroy it.

The information – for example the main fatty acids’ percentages, peroxides and polyphenols – are obtained through an innovative system of optical data processing. These are obtained thanks to the modern tool by Verifood Ltd. These values, loaded into the producer’s database at the time of bottling, are made available to the consumer by scanning the QR code.

“It’s a revolutionary concept of labelling – explains Clemente Pellegrini, president of Anga Giovani Confagricoltura Toscana – because it binds label and product in an incomparable way. In this way both consumers and producers have a guarantee about the quality of the olive oil. This project sees the collaboration of international forces, cutting-edge companies in the fields of research, technology and Tuscan agriculture and we are proud to be part of it. The Qr4oil is easy to use and has various purposes, including the controls done by the bodies responsible that would have available information on the product in real time, without having to carry out slow and expensive chemical analyses”.

Read more...