Special Session 5

SPECIAL SESSION #5

Lorenzo Guerrini

University of Padua, Italy

• lorenzo.guerrini@unipd.it

Annachiara Berardinelli

University of Trento, Italy

• annachiara.berardinelli@unitn.it

Eleonora Iaccheri

University of Bologna, Italy

• eleonora.iaccheri4@unibo.it

Zicheng Gao

China Agricultural University

• gaozicheng@cau.edu

Effective monitoring throughout the post-harvest phases of food is essential for safeguarding its safety and quality up to the consumer's fork. This session is dedicated to exploring the critical role of measurement tools and statistical methods in ensuring the quality of food products following harvest. From post-harvest handling and storage to transportation and commercialization, every stage shows unique challenges that must be addressed to mitigate risks, uphold quality standards and reduce food losses.
The session delves into the innovative methodologies and technologies employed for accurate and reliable monitoring and assessment of various factors affecting food safety and quality, including environmental and storage conditions, contamination and spoilage, physical characteristics, nutritional content, volatile compound assessment, and more.

We welcome contributions covering the following topics:

• Assessment of damages during handling, storage and transport of foods;
• Tools and techniques for monitoring environmental and packaging conditions;
• Methods for detecting contamination and spoilage in post-harvest food products;
• Assessment methods for post-harvest nutritional content and quality preservation;
• Rapid tools for the assessment of volatile compounds in post-harvest;
• Case studies and practical applications of measurement tools in post-harvest food safety and quality assurance;
• Exploration of emerging trends and future directions in metrology for post-harvest practices;
• Statistical approaches in ensuring the quality in post-harvest: chemometrics, machine learning and model uncertainty.

Lorenzo Guerrini, is an Associate Professor of Agricultural Mechanics at the Department of Territory and Agro-Forest Systems (TESAF) at the University of Padua. He teaches courses in Food Science and Technology, as well as Viticulture and Oenology Science and Technology degree programs, with specializations in Agrifood Industry Engineering and Oenological Plant Engineering. Dr. Guerrini earned his PhD in Sustainable Management of Agricultural and Forestry Resources, specializing in Agro-Forestry Engineering, from the University of Florence. His research primarily focuses on the development of machinery, devices, and systems for the transformation of agricultural products into food. Dr. Guerrini's scientific endeavours span numerous national and international research projects, in collaboration with industry partners. His specific research interests include: i) Developing machinery and systems for controlling and managing the nutritional and sensory profiles of foodstuffs. ii) Modeling physical and chemical changes in foods during processing. iii) Developing physical measures to improve food processing control.

Annachiara Berardinelli, received the degree in Food Science and Technologies and the doctoral degree in Agricultural Engineering from University of Bologna. She is Associate Professor at the University of Trento (Center of Agriculture, Food and Environment C3A and Department of Industrial Engineering). She is in charge to teach “Mechanization and precision viticulture” and “Innovative plants and automation for the agri-food production and transformation” courses.
She works on the assessment of physical and mechanical properties of agricultural products and on the development of systems for non-destructive determinations of biological product attributes, based on their optical, electric and dielectric properties and on the combination with multivariate and machine learning tools. Another area of work is the study of innovative solutions for non-thermal treatments of food products.

Eleonora Iaccheri, received a degree in Food Science and Technologies and in 2014 a PhD degree in Agricultural Engineering. The research activity started in 2008, and now she is a Junior researcher type A of the Department of Agro-Food Sciences and Technologies (University of Bologna), competition sector Agricultural, Forestry and Biosystems engineering, scientific disciplinary sector: Agricultural mechanics. In addition, she is a member of the Interdepartmental Centre for Agri-Food Industrial Research, belonging to the operating unit: Processes and Food Products. The research activity concerns the study of physical parameters of food undergoing modification as a function of the storage or the production chain since the raw materials are subjected to important transformation defining the stability of the final product. The physical properties studied regard the thermal properties, the water-solid dynamics, and dielectric properties of food and agriculture matrixes. The dielectric properties were also implemented to develop measurement system applicable online in food plants to monitor several quality parameters and also exploited to develop sensors for in-field application and post-harvest monitoring.

Zicheng Gao, earns his M.S. degree in surveying and mapping engineering from the Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in agricultural information and technology at China Agricultural University. His research interests involve computer vision, machine learning, 3-D point cloud intelligent processing and its application in the field of precision agriculture. His recent research focuses on food computing and measurement, which includes the development of a system for automatic food recognition and nutritional content calculation.