MEDITOMATO

The main goal of MEDITOMATO is to demonstrate innovative technology solutions in three demo-sites in Spain, Italy and Greece covering the whole tomato value chain (from agricultural production to fresh product, processing and distribution) enabling this sector (including small and medium enterprises and smallholders) to progress at different levels (environmental, food quality & safety, sustainability, traceability, efficiency and water management) contributing to a consistent rural and social development of the Mediterranean agro-food sector.

MEDITOMATO will demonstrate different innovations along the tomato industry value chain, with direct implication of actors in charge of production, processing and distribution to deliver high quality, safe and sustainable products which bring social, economic and environmental added value to the sector. To this end, in each demo-site (Spain, Italy and Turkey), all stakeholders around the value chain will be involved from production to distribution. The goal of this concept is not only a technical validation of solutions, but also the approval from key stakeholders (e.g. potential investors, regulatory bodies, other production plants) for their adoption and market penetration.

The project is focused on the tomato industry due to its relevance and exclusivity in the Mediterranean, but the replication to other crops (pepper and cucumber) will be also subject of assessment in the project. Sustainability is the pillar of the project and will be considered for the technology deployments done at environmental (water & fertilization management and energy efficiency), technical (maintenance of deployed equipment), social (acceptance of the technology by end users) and economic (feasibility of solutions).

The main goal of MEDITOMATO comprises technology developments to add value to production (bringing innovation towards quality, safety, fertigation management and production/processing optimization) and distribution (integrating logistics optimization by means of yield and demand estimation in the global web platform developed in the project. MEDITOMATO strongly relies on digital opportunities, from data collection from IoT sensors (e.g. soil moisture for irrigation) to data processing and analysis in cloud platforms for optimization at all value chain levels (production, processing and distribution). Besides, the traceability system covering production and processing will be put in place and integrated with the global web platform.

The Wuppertal Institute will conduct the ecological, social and economical assessment along the supply chains.