Technology Transfer Department

Application sectors

Problem to solve

To make food quality and safety objective and measurable, it is essential to develop accurate and sensitive analytical methodologies that allow the detection and quantification of contaminants, nutritional or nutraceutical substances, origin markers, ingredients, and additives, or that enable the identification of fraud and adulteration. To ensure comparability and guarantee the metrological traceability of measurement results, appropriate metrological tools are required, particularly suitable methods and Reference Materials. Reference Materials (RMs) often represent the only available tool to ensure the quality of chemical and biological measurements. They can be used for method validation and performance verification, instrument calibration, measurement uncertainty assessment, value assignment to materials, and quality control.

Description

The Reference Material plants are dedicated to the development and preparation of new Reference Materials for the agrifood sector. These facilities provide services related to feasibility studies, development, and production of Reference Materials (including customized ones), as well as support services for the validation of analytical methodologies, development of procedures for measurement uncertainty assessment, organization and management of interlaboratory comparisons, and Proficiency Testings. The plants consist of two main components, one located at the C.R. Casaccia and the other at the C.R. Trisaia, which work in close synergy. Specifically: - The C.R. Casaccia facility focuses on feasibility studies, preparation of test batches, and the production of Reference Materials (including customized ones) in small batches (up to 100 units). - The C.R. Trisaia facility is specialized in medium- and large-scale production of Reference Materials (batches of up to 1000 units, unit sizes ranging from 25 to 100 g) and is equipped with three distinct production lines for lyophilized, liquid, and soil-based Reference Materials. Moreover, the facilities enable the execution of stability tests under thermal and luminous stress and are supported by chemical-analytical laboratories for the Reference Material characterization and homogeneity testing.

Research group involved