A total of 40 organizations, including 6 scientific and 34 company partners from 5 countries, are taking a farm-to-fork approach to addressing food safety and food security issues, in the form of the new K1 Center for Feed and Food Quality, Safety and Innovation (FFoQSI) in Austria.

The goal of the four-year, sixteen million euro project is to make feed and food production better, safer and more sustainable, and to drive further innovation through basic and applied
research.

”FFoQSI would create a unique hallmark of food chain integration in Europe for countries—particularly where small and medium size food supply chains are essential,” stated the FFOQSI project coordinator, Professor Martin Wagner of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.

Revolutionary technology

The effort spans 12 projects that address specific issues relating to the production of food of plant and animal origin, intertwined with an overarching innovation platform that bundles cutting-edge technologies for use in either pre-harvest or post-harvest quality assurance.

“Novel technologies such as next-generation sequencing and advanced physico-chemical analysis are going to revolutionize the fields of molecular biology and sensing technology in the very near future. These technologies can be used in plant science and animal science but also in food and consumer science,” explained Prof Wagner.

Leading research

“BIOMIN has been the strongest company-based supporter of FFoQSI since the days when the idea was generated,” commented Prof Wagner.

“As a key player in developing innovative solutions for the feed and food industries, we see a clear rationale for employing our extensive research & development capabilities here,” noted Dr Gerd Schatzmayr, Research Director at the BIOMIN Research Center. “It affords us a chance to further develop our longstanding R&D partnerships with leading institutions in Austria and beyond.”

Specifically, BIOMIN will take part in 3 distinct projects, related to mycotoxin detection, phytogenic feed additives and antibiotic resistance in livestock. 

Mycotoxins

The first project, conducted in cooperation with the Center for Analytical Chemistry at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), aims to improve detection of mycotoxins and other contaminants in crops, and builds on the state-of-the-art liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) technology.

“Sophisticated multi-mycotoxin methods, such as Spectrum...