Infrastructure

METROFOOD-RI is structured according to a Hub & Nodes model. The Central Hub (CH) will be the statutory seat of the ERIC and will represent the heart of the strategy, coordination, communication, and administration, and will manage the central e-portal that will give access to all the resources and services of the RI. The CH will act as a coordinating European layer across all national nodes (NNs), while the NNs will represent the infrastructure's operational sites.

METROFOOD-RI includes numerous facilities distributed in 18 European Countries that can provide scientific services in an integrated and collaborative way on the territory. It combines a physical infrastructure (P-RI) and an electronic infrastructure (e-RI) to coordinate and integrate existing networks of plants and laboratories.

The physical infrastructure includes:

• The “Metro” side
• The “Food” side

The “METRO side” consists of:

• analytical labs for the development and validation of new methods for the chemical, physical-chemical and (micro)biological characterisation of foods and any matrix of interest for the agrifood system (environmental matrixes from the agro-ecosystem of production, packaging, and other food contact materials, etc.)
• devices and plants for the development, production, characterisation and certification of new Reference Materials for the agrifood sector.

The “FOOD side” consists of: experimental fields/farms/fisheries for crop production and animal breeding; small-scale plants for food processing and storage, facilities for the application of new (mild) technologies in food processing and by-product valorisation; kitchen labs for food preparation and storage, and “demo” sites for direct stakeholder engagement (e.g., to run Living Labs).

The e-component of METROFOOD-RI consists of a service-oriented architecture providing a platform accessible to the user community (in Europe and beyond) for sharing and integrating data, knowledge and information about food analysis, food composition, nutritional contents, level of contaminants and markers. It will also collect the results provided by the physical component, organizing and complementing them with existing data and providing tools for its use. The e-RI is being developed by integrating different data sources, and services are being implemented to compare and make interoperable food data and any other data of interest concerning agrifood and effects on human health, as well as to find out the metrological tools for the analytical purposes related to food and nutrition. These data are analytical results, including analytical information and knowledge about methods, standards, best practices, publications, etc.

The e-RI collects, integrates, and makes the P-RI results open and interoperable, organising and complementing them with existing data and providing tools for various uses of the data, even promoting their interoperability and integration with data arising from other existing networks and RIs.

The physical and the electronic infrastructures are strictly interconnected, working in close relationships, and therefore METROFOOD-RI must be seen as a Research Infrastructure as a whole. The electronic infrastructure will collect also new results from the physical infrastructure, organizing and integrating them with existing data. Conversely, the physical infrastructure will make use of data and information available via the electronic infrastructure. In this way, the P-RI outputs (e.g.: new RMs, new analytical methods, food composition data, markers, etc.) are inputs for the e-RI (databases on RMs and methods; food composition databases; geographic and genetic markers databases, etc.), and vice-versa the e-RI will support the experimental activities of the laboratories involved in the P-RI by providing information and data, such as available metrological tools (e.g. RMs, reference methods, guidelines and harmonised procedures), threshold values, food data.