00:01Europe's best food safety experts are joining forces to crackdown on fraud.
00:06Euronews is following them in this special series called The Food Detectives.
00:10In this episode, the team committed to complete clarity in why.
00:23It's autumn in the Douro Valley in Portugal and there's something special about the harvest this year.
00:29These vineyards are at the heart of an effort to bring total traceability to winemaking
00:34and it begins with measuring the production of each plant.
00:38Food detective Antonio Graça explains why it's so important.
00:43Vineyards are not homogeneous units, okay?
00:46There are micro variations in micro climates, in soil, even the plants are individual.
00:52So it is important for us to understand how each grapevine is actually leaving.
00:59Measuring production vine by vine is new here and to make it possible,
01:04these food detectives from the EU's Watson project have developed two devices.
01:09One is a smart secateur and the other is a connected bucket, both robust enough for everyday use.
01:15They allow the winemakers to record exactly where and when the grapes were picked.
01:20The goal is, during the Vindima, during the process of normal,
01:25we can measure all the cuts that he makes with the knife,
01:28and synchronize the cut with the disposal of the vineyards.
01:32It has a plate that allows to measure the weight and the weight result of the vineyards.
01:38The vineyards is also localized by GPS,
01:42which allows us to show the location of where the cut and the deposition happened in the vineyards.
01:49The motivation for such precision is clear,
01:52to shed light on exactly how the grapes develop different qualities and why.
01:57It's really a detective work,
01:59because we have to look at all the leads that nature gives us.
02:03We have to understand the soil, we have to understand the climate,
02:07the amount of sun, rain, winds, solar radiation,
02:12that is actually what makes the plant work and produce what we want.
02:19Once the grapes are harvested from these vines and loaded onto the tractor,
02:23they're tracked en route to the cellars.
02:26And here, the information flow continues.
02:29The moment they come into the reception tank,
02:32they are assigned a code to that volume of grapes,
02:36from which we know all the individual grapevines
02:39that contributed for that reception tank volume.
02:43One of the key challenges is managing large amounts of information securely.
02:48So these food detectives are testing blockchain technology
02:51to record which vines grapes went into each bottle.
02:55All this information that is collected,
02:57the goal is that it contributes to the knowledge
03:00and guarantees the rasterability.
03:02But we also need to keep the information
03:04in a way that is reliable and unviolable.
03:08And that's when blockchain comes out.
03:10We give us this mechanism.
03:12Alongside blockchain, another emerging technology
03:15is slowly making its way into winemaking.
03:18This autonomous robot knows these vines well
03:21and is being tested as a tool to cut grass,
03:24prune the plants and spray.
03:26Robots in the vines offer the chance to gather even more data
03:46about how the plants are progressing.
03:49And if we have a robot that travels in these vines
03:52autonomously and frequently,
03:53we will be able to tell the story of each uva that exists in the vines.
03:58We will be able to understand what temperature it was,
04:01what humidity it was exposed,
04:04and what kinds of treatments and fertilization
04:06took this uva.
04:10The ultimate goal of this team is to produce wine
04:13that can trace its journey from the bottle all the way back
04:16to specific grapes harvested on a precise day
04:19on a particular patch of hillside.
04:22For winemakers, such traceability means a chance
04:25to better capture the character of each harvest.
04:28We can work better at generating quality,
04:33generating identity from the earth, from the plants, from the places,
04:39and then transfer those identity and quality into the product,
04:45into the wine that the consumer will enjoy.
04:48That's all for this episode.
04:49Next time on The Food Detectives,
04:51cracking down on counterfeit olive oil in Italy.
04:54See you then.
04:55The Food Detectives
04:59coming in.
05:00To the 볼
05:16to the seller of the industry in every year.
05:18Sweet 뒤
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