The deadline for the open calls of the Early Phase Implementation of METROFOOD-RI has been extended to April 19th.
There's an important update regarding the two open calls of the Early Phase Implementation of METROFOOD-RI. The deadline for submitting applications, originally set for 12:00 PM on April 15th, has been extended to 12:00 PM on Friday, April 19th.
As a reminder, these two calls are open to all stakeholders in the agri-food sector.
The first call, titled "Characterization of fermentation processes and their bio-based derived products from the food industries – Remote access," is aimed at researchers/academics and companies interested in fermentation processes related to food products. In detail, this call offers a free service for the characterization and verification of the safety of the entire fermentation process and bio-based products derived from fermentation used in food processing and packaging.
The service includes the application of microorganism identification methods (metagenomics), microorganism characterization (metabolomics, metatranscriptomics, and metaproteomics), evaluation of the chemical composition of raw materials and/or finished products, identification of contaminants, characterization of biopolymers, migration studies, toxicity analysis, bioactivity testing of products, and much more. Remote access to facilities at EUT (Spain), IJZSRM (North Macedonia), INSA (Portugal), and TUBITAK (Turkey) will be available.
The second call is titled "Pilots for food production and integrated analytical services: development of novel products with ingredients including alternative proteins and/or food by-products – Physical + Remote access." In this case, the aim is to produce new products containing alternative proteins and/or food by-products. The service - integrated with a predefined set of combinatorial analytical services and food technologies - will involve the use of food by-products (e.g., from cereals) and innovative ingredients (e.g., insects) for the preparation of new ingredients and products. After producing and processing new ingredients or foods (finished products), related analytical services will focus on their sensory, nutritional characterization, health promotion, as well as safety assessment. The service will be provided through a combination of physical and remote access via various METROFOOD-RI service providers. Physical access to experimental facilities and laboratories at IBA (Romania) and CZU (Czech Republic) and remote access to analytical laboratories at TUM (Germany), ENEA (Italy), AUTH (Greece), and JSI (Slovenia) will be available.
Access to METROFOOD-RI facilities will be provided free of charge (users will only be responsible for any additional shipping and travel expenses).
