The objective of the 'TIPITEC' project, funded by Lazio Innova and led by Campus Bio-Medico, is the transfer of skills from academic laboratories to company production chains to improve production processes, conservation and safety of some of the most renowned foods of the regional territory
Un network of five universities in Lazio which puts its own technical know-how science in the agri-food field available to companies in the sector, to contribute to the improvement of the production, conservation and food safety processes of some regional 'excellence': it is the synergy made possible by the project TIPITEC (Tipicization of Italian Products through TECHnologie), of which theUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma is the leader.
The project came first among the winners of the call on the themes of Expo 2015 organized by Lazio Innova, regional company for the development in support of enterprises. The universities of Roma Tre, Sapienza, Tor Vergata and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart also participate in the Campus Bio-Medico.
An important initiative for the relaunch of a sector which in 2014, as reported in recent months by Legacoop Agroalimentare Lazio, experienced a real black year, with the worst production crisis of the last twenty years, aggravated by the increase of almost five percentage points of the operating costs of companies.
"With the TIPITEC project – explains the Professor Laura De Gara, Delegate ofUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma for the development of the initiatives part of the project – we will be able to transfer academic skills and the results of our research in the nutraceutical and food fields from laboratories to company production chains. In this way, science will provide the entrepreneurial realities of the area free of charge with information on the most up-to-date and advanced tools for solving problems related to production processes and food safety".
Will 100 typical products of Lazio that can be valorised: from Amatrice's bacon to Ariccia's porchetta, from San Vittore's tanned leather to Latina's kiwi, from the cockle of the Roman coast to Gaeta's olives, with a long list of wines, waters and other 'delicacies' well known even outside the regional borders.
The 'meeting place' between the academic and productive worlds will be a dedicated web portal, which will include the patents, research and technological devices made available to companies. The latter will be able to search for the most congenial information and solutions to their needs starting from seven food macro-fields: meat, cheese and dairy products, wines, vegetables, bakery-confectionary products, oil and the 'other' sector, which brings together the mineral waters and other products not belonging to the previous categories. Alternatively, it will also be possible to carry out the search based on the type of supply chain problem or the degree of complexity of the methodological approach required.
As pointed out by Eng. Marco Santonico, Professor of Food Technology Engineering at Campus Bio-Medico and project coordinator, “the best of scientific skills applied to food will be brought into play: from the 'FLUTE' system, which monitors the quality and level of seasoning of cured meats, to multi-sensory systems capable of unmasking any counterfeiting of oils, wines or other foods. There will also be innovative technologies for checking food microbial contamination, the durability of so-called 'fourth range products', such as packaged salads, without forgetting the chemical analysis of the antioxidant and nutritional properties of food which can be carried out on complex biological systems: a method verification of the effects of some substances on human health more faithfully than traditional biochemical tests".
TIPITEC will also offer another opportunity to facilitate the transfer of skills from universities to companies: six study meetings, focus on strategic issues in the agri-food sector, scheduled at the headquarters ofUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma (via Alvaro del Portillo, 21) between May and October, during the semester of Expo 2015. An opportunity to promote an unprecedented 'model' of meeting between university and business in the field of technologies for the food chain. A partnership that promises to help companies in Lazio, on the eve of the Expo, to make a qualitative leap in the enhancement and protection of their most renowned products through scientifically validated tools and criteria.
