Canadian Photonics in Agriculture and food

Canada has long been looking, as the Canadian Strategy report on Food is showing, at the Agriculture and Food sector outlining a Strategy and initiating a Round table taking place yearly.

The following Key areas were identified to strengthen the Canadian Food sector:

Photonics is a key player in the ITC, the automatization and digitization process.

As is shown by the recent post of one of Photons Canada/CPIC member INO, the application of Hyperspectral imaging in determining the shelf life of spinach and other leafy greens.

In a report from Global news on June 27,2020 dealing with the fragility of the meat packing plants as highlighted by the disastrous impact of the closing due to COVID-19, an approach considered is automation.

“At the JBS lamb-processing plant in Australia, the company uses artificial intelligence to automate some of the meat-cutting jobs. X-rays and CT scanners are used to create a 3D model of the shape and size of the carcass before cutting starts. The technology has already significantly reduced the number of workers on the cutting lines.” This will also solve the employee shortage that the Canada Strategy report is referring to, “More than 85% of industrial butcher and meat cutter job vacancies reported to Statistics Canada for the fourth quarter of 2017 remained unfilled for more than 90 days.” and upgrade the skill level needed since people are still needed to oversee the equipment and operate.

According to the “Advances in meat spoilage detection: A short focus on rapid methods and technologies” article published in CyTA Journal of food Volume 16,2018 as the image shows there are several photonics technologies like FTIR, NIR and Fluorescence, that are used to detect Adulteration, Contamination, Classification, Quantification, Bacteria, Spoilage and to discriminate meat.

The article also states that”Spectroscopic and electrochemical detection platforms are emerging new alternatives”

The list of innovation organizations is a list of Canadian organizations that lists a wide variety of universities, research centers and institutes specializing in food innovation.

Canada Strategy report Food Sept 28-2018 link https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/098.nsf/eng/00022.html

Food Processing round table https://www.agr.gc.ca/eng/canadian-agri-food-sector/value-chain-roundtables/food-processing/?id=1385742632592

Meat processing changes June 27,2020 https://globalnews.ca/news/7054288/meat-processing-changes-coronavirus/

CyTA link https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19476337.2018.1525432