The EU-funded PRIMA program (Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area, prima-med.org) recently selected the projects to be financed from the proposals presented to last year's call. One of them is the MEDITOMATO project, which has been selected for funding under the Horizon 2020 conditions in the category "Agro-food chain: implementation of innovation in the agro-food production chains of small growers and small and medium-sized enterprises."
The main objective of the MEDITOMAT0 project is to test innovative technological solutions for the tomato value chain (from cultivation to processing and marketing) in three pilot projects in the countries that are part of the PRIMA program. This makes it possible for the sector, and in particular for small-scale growers, to make progress at various levels (environment, food safety and quality, sustainability, traceability, efficiency and resource management). The project thus contributes to improving the rural and social development of the agro-food sector in the Mediterranean.
Four Spanish institutions will participate in the project, currently in the negotiation stage for the grant agreement. We are talking about Ingeniería y Control Electrónico S.A. (the coordinator of the project and a partner company of INYCOM, which will use a software tool for the collection, processing and analysis of data with artificial intelligence technologies to facilitate decision-making in tomato cultivation and marketing), the CNTA (National Center for Food Technology and Safety, which will be in charge of impact studies, among other things), IK4-TEKNIKER (Technological Center responsible for the development and validation of a Vis-NIR-based sensor, to determine the quality of tomatoes) and Grupo Empresarial La Caña (fruit and vegetable company in Granada dedicated to growing, exporting, importing and marketing cherry tomatoes). The other partners are Future Intelligence Ltd (Greece), Wuppertal Institute (Germany), ARCA 2010 a.r.l. Soc.Coop. (Italy), the Institut National de Recherche and Génie Rural, Eaux et Forêts (Tunisia), Bursa Uludag University (Turkey), and Diadikasia Business Consulting S.A. (Greece).