The information website by, for and about
the tomato processing industry globally

Tracability of tomatoes: Copagri recommends BlockChain and TEA

02/08/2024

Madeleine Royère-Koonings
Italy,
WPTC
${printContents} `); printWindow.document.close(); printWindow.focus(); printWindow.print(); printWindow.close(); }); });

During the preparatory meeting for the establishment of the Tomato Supply Chain Table, the Copagri confederation stressed the importance of using BlockChain and Techniques of Assisted Evolution (TEA) to promote traceability of tomatoes.
 
“Aiming decisively at the countless possibilities offered by research and innovation applied to agriculture, starting with Blockchain and the Techniques of Assisted Evolution-TEA, is a condition sine qua non to promote the traceability of tomatoes to improve their agronomic characteristics, thus going for the qualitative-quantitative improvement of one of our country's leading productions.”
 
“We are talking about one of the most structured supply chains of the country's agriculture, which is the leading producer of tomatoes within the EU and the third worldwide, behind the United States and China, with a production that in 2023 amounted to about 5.4 million tons,” Copagri added.
 
“For these reasons, we can only applaud Masaf's intention to proceed with the establishment of the Tomato Supply Chain Table, which had not met for about three years, distinguishing within it a special section dedicated to tomatoes for industry and one for the table product, compartments that as known are characterized by different situations and problems, related to different types of cultivation and different competition from foreign countries,” the Confederation declared, asking the supply chain to ”work to unite the two IOs of tomatoes, so as to ensure better planning and greater transparency.”
 
“Such interventions would support a sector that in recent years has had to cope with a significant increase in production costs and the increasingly evident fallout of climate change, with excess rain and hail in the North and drought and high temperatures in the South,” Copagri continued. They additionally noted that “tomato plants are subject to various diseases and insect attacks, which lead to increased costs and production losses and which could also be countered through genetic improvement, starting, for example, with the positive request for experimentation of a tomato variety resistant to the orobanche pest and obtained through TEAs.”

Source: corriereortofrutticolo