The Galicia Food & Drink Cluster (Clusaga) leads the national collaborative project Photonics4Bakery, which has been selected in the last call of the national support programme for clusters (Agrupaciones Empresariales Innovadoras), convened by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism.

The general objective of the Photnics4Bakery project is to advance the digital transformation of companies in the bakery sector by investigating the applicability of photonic technologies in improving processes from raw material to final product.

This project aims to obtain a critical study on the usefulness of two photonic technologies: NIR (Near InfraRed spectroscopy) and HSI (HyperSpectral Imaging) in the non-invasive determination of different food quality and safety parameters that condition the production process of the sector.

Photnics4Bakery will be carried out by a consortium coordinated by the Clusaga, which includes the AEI Vitartis and the companies AOTECH, ATRIA Innovation, Sanbrandán, Lamastelle and DaVeiga.

This is being pursued through the following specific objectives:

• Evaluate the fit of NIR and HSI technologies within the production process of companies, seeking improvements in quality control of raw materials, intermediate processes and final product.
• Advance in the implementation of machine learning techniques and intensive computational processing systems that allow the development of new non-invasive tools for the qualitative and quantitative characterization of raw materials, intermediate or final products throughout the production process.
• Analyze the mechanisms that enable its effective implementation in the industrial processes studied, promoting the digital transformation of companies and reducing their current costs.