DIRECT-TO-OBJECT FORMATION OF UNIQUE AND SECURE IDENTIFIERS FOR AGRI-FOOD SUPPLY CHAINS: MATERIALS, MANUFACTURING, AND FINANCIAL FEASIBILITY

The long-term goal of the project is well aligned with the Novel Foods and Innovative Manufacturing Technologies area priority, as we intend to develop an approach that will reduce loss of food and more easily connect consumers to food information while simultaneously decreasing label and packaging waste. This will be achieved by extending our prior work on Dendritic Identifiers (DI) - a novel cell phone readable digital trigger that connects individual items to their digital presence in the new wave of electronic ledgers that are enhancing efficiency, quality, safety, loss control, and transparency in agri-food production systems. The underlying technology for the scalable manufacturing and reading (using a cellphone app and cloud-based data processing) of label-based DI triggers has already been developed under a previous NIFA supported program. We will now direct our efforts to the formation of these elements directly on food items in place of current labels or packaging used for product identification. Direct marking of produce to reduce the cost and waste associated with labels has been attempted in the past but has not met with much success. Through our previous work on the DI technology and preliminary studies of direct-to-object (DTO) techniques, we believe we have the makings of the ultimate product identification solution for agri-food supply chains.The supporting objectives of this work are:1. Provide material formulations which result in easily read triggers on produce using direct-to-object methods that are food-safe, stable, and effortlessly removable by the consumer.2. Develop a scalable manufacturing process framework for DTO DI trigger formation.3. Consider the potential financial feasibility of the DTO DI technology vis-à-vis existing and alternative proposed labeling systems under uncertain market conditions.