TRACE-RICE - Tracing rice and valorizing side streams along Mediterranean blockchain

Rice is the primary staple food for about half of the world's population and it provides 20% of the calories consumed worldwide. The relevance of rice in the European diet has been increasing due to its fundamental role in modern and healthy diets. Most of the rice consumed in Europe is grown in the EU Mediterranean countries. Rice is endowed with a rich genetic diversity that covers a great variety of species and origins, some more valued than others. Rice-based foods are highly prone to adulteration. Rice fraud was reported by EFSA as an emerging food issue. The principal occurrence are fraudulent variety claims that cause significant loss of value for the consumers and jeopardize brand value of honest producers. ln addition, fraudulent misrepresentation related to sustainability issues (pesticides residues and mycotoxins) is an increasing risk. Thus, to protect the interests of both the quality producers and the consumers, several methods and technologies must be developed and implemented for validating and assuring the traceability, authenticity and safety of the cultivated rice, in order to maximize value for the Mediterranean rice producers. This has become a critical point, especially when cereal imports into the Mediterranean area have doubled in the last 2 decades. In fact, fraudulent misrepresentation related to sustainability issues is an increasing risk in the medium to long term and rice market claims for a solution to both crucial problems, fraud and food safety. TRACE RICE offers an alternative based on innovation towards natural, healthy and tasteful rice-based foods with the use and the provision of low-cost and passive technologies for product traceability and rapid bioassays for the screening of multiple compounds to fully address the emerging and multivariate challenges.

Activities are focused on creation of expedite tools for rice authenticity, innovative solutions for contaminant mitigation, product traceability, conversion of by-products to innovative natural functional ingredients and creation of robust models from unstructured data. TRACE-RICE pays particular attention to implementation of RFID tags for wireless and real time supply chain integration, enabling a more sustainable use of resources and minimizing waste. This will be achieved in 4 main pilot activities and 3 market replication cases, starting the technological developments at prototype scale (TRL3-5) and will move to validation/production stages (TRL7-8).

Expected impacts Environmental impacts: • Support contaminant mitigation by promoting the reduction of the use of chemicals. • Reduce fossil fuels consumption by using blockchain technologies. • Support the goals of the EU biodiversity strategy by the valorization and genetic characterisation of adapted varieties and integration of datasets in a network database. Social impacts: • Improve the quality of life of consumers by improving the rice quality control and offering healthier and safer products by upholding quality standards. • Obtain new high added value products and contribute to food diversity, promoting Mediterranean cultural heritage and boosting the circular economy. • lncrease the confidence and producer-consumer engagement in Mediterranean foods, ensuring traceability and origin of rice varieties and reducing fraud and contamination. Economic impacts: • Foster importance to the Mediterranean rice commercialization in international markets by the mitigation of rice fraud by the development of rice authenticity tools (DNA-based and predictive models using machine learning strategies). • Adopt measures to reduce the extreme volatility of prices of rice based foods in the market and facilitate timely access to information thanks to blockchain technologies. • lntroduce new business model for a technologically stagnant sector. • Improve the competiveness of local producers and SMEs by fostering interaction between scientific and entrepreneurial stakeholders.