Soybean farming—providing protein-rich feed for farm animals worldwide—is the third largest driver of tropical deforestation and expanding. Importing economies are considering regulating the trade of soybeans and other deforestation-driving commodities, and trading companies will be required to conduct due diligence to ensure compliance.
One of the biggest challenges in tackling deforestation is simply knowing where a batch of soy actually came from.
In this new paper, by combining stable isotope ratios and multi element profiles with Gaussian Process modelling, Rsearchers pinpointed the harvest origin of soybeans to within ~193 km across the main soy growing areas of South America.
This review (open access) examines state-of-the-art technologies developed to support traceability and anti-counterfeiting in agri-food supply chains, considering their application across the full spectrum of stakeholders. It includes sections on
AI and Internet-of-Things
Barcode, Non-electronic approaches, and molecular traceability
RFiD and Near Field Communication tags
Distributive ledgers
To provide a system-level perspective, the review adopts a five-layer socio-technical traceability and anti-counterfeiting framework, comprising identity, sensing, intelligence, integrity, and interaction layers, which is used to map enabling technologies and reinterpret the evolution of traceability systems as a progression of functional capabilities rather than isolated technological upgrades. Using this framework, the review analyzes the advantages and limitations of current solutions and clarifies how traceability and anti-counterfeiting functions emerge through technology integration. It further identifies gaps that hinder large-scale and equitable adoption. Finally, future research directions are outlined to address current technical, economic, and governance challenges and to guide the development of more resilient, trustworthy, and sustainable agri-food traceability systems.
Cell Cultivated Products (CCPs) are novel foods produced by growing animal cells in controlled environments rather than through traditional livestock farming. CCPs offer the potential for sustainable and ethical alternatives to conventional protein sources but raise important questions regarding safety, quality, authenticity and labelling.
There is a growing requirement to understand the current state of laboratory-based analytical methods that could be applied for the traceability of CCPs. As part of a project for the Food Standards Agency (FS900616: Review of analytical methods for Cell Cultivated Products), the National Measurement Laboratory at LGC is assessing the potential of laboratory-based analytical methods for the detection of CCPs in food and feed supply chains.
A questionnaire has been devised to help inform the knowledge and evidence base that will support readiness for the practical enforcement of CCPs and address potential future challenges.
We kindly invite stakeholders, across industry, academia, regulatory bodies and laboratories, to complete the survey by 6 March 2026 and share insights based on their professional experience — your input will play a vital role in shaping future analytical capability and ensuring effective oversight of CCPs.
This work, originally presented at an Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers conference and now published in an IEEE journal (purchase required), provides an example of how a small team of researchers can develop a bespoke digital traceability system for the Agri-Food industry. This provides an alternative approach to buying one of the distributive ledger systems available from large commercial software vendors.
The researchers developed a decentralized system for the agrifood supply chain that allows product traceability and quality assurance. System decentralization and privacy preservation were enabled through the combination of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), and Verifiable Credentials (VCs). DIDs provide stakeholders with complete control, eliminating the need for centralized identity providers. Role-based access control is facilitated through VC-Role, which defines the permissions of actors, and VC-Access, which ensures secure interactions with private blockchain channels.
The publication includes a description of the system architecture, DID and VC integration for access control, and a discussion of the QA requirements of the food industry.
The authors conclude that their system promotes traceability and ensures tamper-proof records of product quality. A proof of concept demonstrates the feasibility and potential impact of this approach in improving quality assurance.
Isotope ratio data are increasingly used in a variety of fields including, ecology, marine sciences, earth and geosciences, forensic science, hydrology, medicine, food (including food authenticity and origin), and climate science.
Over the years, there have also been changes to guidelines for measurement methods, calibration conventions and even to international measurement standards that form the base of the traceability chain for isotope delta values for H, C, N, O and S.
It is impossible to combine isotope ratio data from a variety of sources unless the data are accompanied by a clear description of traceability and other method details.
The UK National Measurement Laboratory at LGC was part of an international group that compiled the IUPAC Technical Report presenting minimum requirements for reporting isotope ratio data, covering analytical procedure, traceability, data processing and uncertainty evaluation.
This report will help in the standardisation of methods that involve the measurement of stable isotopes.
Read the IUPAC Technical Report on minimum requirements for publishing hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur stable-isotope delta results.
In April 2015, origin labelling became mandatory for fresh meat products in France.
Three years on, France’s Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) conducted an investigation into beef, sheep, pork, and poultry products in France, which has revealed more than 30% fail to comply with labelling and traceability requirements.
Today, amidst COVID-19 lockdown and growing pandemic, global food value chains stand disrupted across all commodities. Food safety has been a growing global concern that is only set to rise in this COVID world. It is in these times that it has become more imperative than ever, to ensure unadulterated and safe food across global food value chains.
Digitisation of such value chains towards making food safe, trackable and of desired consumer quality, needs to be accelerated and implemented at a much faster pace than ever.
SourceTrace is a globally leading name in traceability and has already implemented solutions across diverse sectors such as fruits and vegetables, organic cotton, vanilla, aquaculture, flavours and fragrances, spices, honey and more. Working across 28 countries since 2013, SourceTrace’s DATAGREEN platform helps companies track their produce from global locations across all stages while maintaining complete transparency and assurance of quality.
AgNext solves the problem of quality, bringing the best of the technology world for agribusinesses. Using state-of-art technologies in computer vision, spectroscopy and Internet-of-Things (IoT), AgNext has created the singular platform QUALIX, through which trade quality and safety parameters for multiple commodities could be assessed in a minute, enabling agribusinesses to leapfrog their procurement and operations processes, optimise costs, provide traceability, sharpen and smoothen blockchains and most importantly produce excellent products of highest quality for consumers and ensure fair-trade practices with farmers.
Helping businesses ensure the quality of food right from the farm-gates to the consumers, AgNext has partnered with key nodal institutions in multiple commodities and has also been working with leading corporates in each of the segments.
By combining their solutions and signing an MoU, AgNext and SourceTrace have created a technology platform, TraceNext, that can provide complete value chain traceability with an assurance of quality from the farm-gates to the consumer.
The benefits for such a platform as TraceNext, brings immense value to multiple commodity value chains, ensuring various aspects like
Trace food origin and chain of custody
Monitor ethical and sustainable practices used in growing food
Complete value chain traceability – from farm to consumer
Legal and compliance norms
Instant quality testing on trade and safety parameters
Instant trade decisions without any delays and dependencies
Ensure blockchain and fair-trade practices in commodity supply chains
Blockchain has demonstrated its potential for providing greater transparency, veracity, and trust in food information so that supply chain members can act immediately, should problems arise
Read more…
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's (CSIRO) has published a Food and Agribusiness Roadmap to which identifies key growth areas for Australia's food exports.
The document was produced in collaboration with FIAL and names climate change, geopolitical instability and technological advances among the primary challenges facing Australian agribusinesses in the coming decades and warns that previous successes cannot be sustained through productivity improvements alone.
Five key growth enablers arose from industry consultation, each requiring a unique mix of science and technology investment, business action and ecosystem assistance:
1) Traceability and provenance
2 ) Food safety and biosecurity
3) Market intelligence and access
4) Collaboration and knowledge sharing
5) Skills.
The report states that food fraud is estimated to cost around 40 billion U.S. dollars per year worldwide, with the United States (29.8%), China (13.6%) and India (12.6%) being the largest sources of fraudulent production. However, the report also highlights breakthroughs in tracking RFID chips, barcodes and QR codes in food labels and predicts that these will help address some of industry's concerns in traceability and provenance.
