New sensing devices and technologies are the key in addressing numerous challenges that agriculture is facing today. Namely, to provide more food for the ever-growing population, a number of biophysical parameters of plants, soil and food products need to be monitored and measured constantly, thus providing valuable data needed to optimize the entire agricultural process. In addition, the corresponding actuating technologies responsible for applying various measures (e.g. irrigation, fertilization) need to become more precise and allow variable rate inputs with a resolution down to an individual plant. To provide novel sensing and actuating solutions able to address the burning issues in agriculture today, NOCTURNO will bring together and synergistically advance several highly promising research directions which have been investigated separately in the last decade: wave-matter interactions, plasmonics, complex media and artificial materials, acoustic, electromagnetics, optics, bionanosensing. The Project will focus on development of sensors and actuators based on non-conventional propagation of acoustic waves in artificial media, electromagnetic/optical sensors based on metasurfaces, and advanced manufacturing technologies including 3D printing, laser-micromachining technology, and e-beam lithography with the aim to provide practical solutions for the fabrication of novel acoustic and metasurface-based sensors and actuators. NOCTURNO proposes an exchange programme which brings together three European academic institutions, two European SME companies, and two third-country universities. The consortium has the specific expertise in the fields listed above and it will create synergies that will first advance the current level of fundamental scientific knowledge and then support its transformation into innovative products with the high potential to revolutionize the agri-food sector.

h-ALO aims to develop and demonstrate in real-setting a new photonic-based sensor which will allow local food producers and retailers to control food quality and safety, therefore increasing competitiveness in the whole food production value chain. The sensor will provide: • Unprecedented high sensitivity, low limit-of-detection and large dynamic range compared to previously developed portable systems through the combination of an analyte pre-concentration and a multi-modal detection scheme; • Miniaturization and integration of optoelectronic and plasmonic components allowing portability in optical detection; • Multiplex-analyte recognition, allowing the unprecedented detection of both microbiological and chemical contaminants such as pesticides/antiparasitic, heavy metals, micro-organisms; • Easy and fast sample preparation protocols which are adaptable for a wide range of food samples; • Measurement automation and fast response, making the sensor reliable for on-site use by farmers, retailers and non-expert operators; • Mobile-phone connectivity and cloud-based data management allowing a distributed, anonymous food monitoring along the farm-to-fork chain. The innovative technologies at the basis of the h-ALO sensor are: i) highly integrated organic/hybrid photonic components as light-source and photodetector; ii) nanoplasmonic biofunctionalized surface assessing innovative multimodal optical transduction; iii) innovative aptamer- and immunoassay-based bio-recognition elements for multiplexing; iv) a smart microsieve membrane for analyte pre-concentration. The h-ALO prototype will be validated in lab by quantitative comparison with benchmark commercially available methods and demonstrated on-site in small selected agri-food chains such as aquaponics, craft beer, raw milk and organic honey, and introduced into an HACCP manual.

The main objective of MOLOKO project is the manufacturing, implementation and validation of a self-managing and automatic miniaturized integrated photonic sensor to be used as process analytical instrumentation for fast-response on-site monitoring of interest analytes for security and quality within milk supply chain. These challenging objectives are achieved by integrating within the same device platform forefront technologies as organic photonics, nanoplasmonics, immunoassay diagnostics and microfluidics. Specifically, we aim at realizing multiplexing quantitative detection of up to 10 analytes among which food safety parameters, e.g. antibiotics (i.e. penicillin, ampicillin, cephalonium) and toxins (i.e. mycotoxins and bacterial toxins) and food quality parameters e.g. lactoferrin and caseins by implementing a highly-integrated optoplasmonic-microfluidic sensor in the strategic checkpoints along the entire supply and value chain of milk. The MOLOKO miniaturized integrated photonic sensor is specifically designed according to milk primary production, processing and distribution end-users in order to enable and guarantee fast, low-cost, robust, quantitative and high-sensitive multiplexing detection for the rapid acceptance screening of milk from primary producers (farm tank milk) or single bovine. The inherent versatility of the sensor guarantees disruptive effectiveness in multiple real settings applications, i.e. as automated sensor integrated in milking machine as handheld reusable analytical instrument for specialized and non-specialised milk operators. The effectiveness and market-placement of the engineered functional prototype is quantitatively evaluated by direct comparison with respect to standard analytical methods and commercially available optical biosensors.