SYMBIOSIS-EU - Scientific Synergism of Nano-Bio-Info-Cogni Science for an Integrated System to Monitor Meat Quality and Safety During Production, Storage, and Distribution in EU

The SYMBIOSIS-EU project will bring together 14 partners from 6 EU countries (plus one each from NZ and US) to study meat safety & quality. The overall aim is to identify and quantitatively evaluate practical and easy to use chemical, biochemical and molecular indices and establish their applicability as quality monitors for inspection of meat safety and quality. The project will apply a multidisciplinary system-wide approach relying on converging technologies (bioinformatics, nanotechnology, modelling) to obtain knowledge for meat safety that will be translated into simple devices and practical indicators of quality and safety.
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The main objectives are
<UL> <LI> To develop and/or validate easy to use chemical/biochemical methods (e.g. biosensors, fluorescence, FT-IR), molecular methods (DNA microarrays),
<LI> To develop a suitable software platform for data sharing and integration,
<LI> To apply multivariate statistical methods and machine learning (neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms) to identify robust multiple compound quality indices,
<LI> Integration of the sensors and information platform and development of a system to automatically transform data acquired from a sample into a diagnosis of meat safety and quality.