In the month leading up to this week’s Federal budget, a number of announcements have been made about Federal government funds being available on a selective basis for food-related projects. Recently,  the Australian Research Council announced that the Tasmanian-based sensory-monitoring technology company, Sense-T, would receive a significant funding injection from the Federal government for Sense-T’s Pathways to Market project. The Sense-T project would receive $2.5 million funding under the... ...Read more »

Three information technology students from the University of Sydney have won the Microsoft Asian Cup with their BlueClover mobile phone app, which is designed to help diabetics manage their condition. The students have been invited to showcase the app at the annual Board of Governors of the Asian Development Bank Forum held in Delhi, India in early May 2013. The meeting is a major forum for policy makers, key industry leaders and non-government organisations to discuss solutions to economic and development... ...Read more »

Barcode company GS1 is about to launch its GoScan app. With the support of a range of food industry partners – including the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC), major supermarkets and food manufacturers – the new GS1 GoScan iPhone application will be launched in Sydney next week. GS1 says the GoScan iPhone application will allow consumers to rapidly and easily access trusted product information from their mobile phone, whether they are at home, at a store or ‘on-the-go’. App users... ...Read more »

SPC Ardmona-owned Goulburn Valley has launched a new range of pre-sliced apple snacks to be promoted by Bindi, Terri and Robert Irwin. As part of the recent SPC Ardmona manufacturing facility upgrade in the Goulburn Valley, new preparation methods exclusively available to SPC Ardmona have allowed product developments. The new technology allows for ultra-modern slicing of the fruit and ability to preserve the fruits’ freshness. The process is said to ensure minimal loss to the aroma, juiciness,... ...Read more »

Coles has launched a trial of a new Coles MasterCard Mobile Wallet that will enable a sample group of customers to pay for groceries with their credit card and earn flybuys points using their smart phone. Similarly to technology seen overseas in the United States by Starbucks and Google, sixty Coles customers with Coles MasterCards are currently trialling the new system. The new trial will assess the user friendliness of the technology, its capacity to increase the speed of transaction, save customers... ...Read more »

A study undertaken by staff at the University of Campinas in Brazil has found that chocolate melting in hot climates may no longer be a problem. Just published in the January issue of the European Journal of Lipid Science and Technology, the study concludes that the use of hardfats in products containing cocoa butter may be sufficient to alter the chemical structure such that chocolate could become heat-resistant. The study assessed the fatty acid and triacylglycerol compositions of a number of fully... ...Read more »

Chicken meat and other foods will be able to be screened for bacteria even faster and more effectively than ever, thanks to breakthrough nanobiotechnology research from The University of Queensland. The study featured on the front cover of the international journal Analytical Biochemistry this month being run by a team of scientists from The University of Queensland and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. The new technology enables DNA amplification on “microspheres” to detect... ...Read more »

Food allergens can now be detected at laboratory quality with the invention of the iTube, a small device that attaches to a standard smart phone. US researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science created the iTube to be used in conjunction with the iTube smart phone application to detect any type of food allergen in a product. Consumer protection laws in America are responsible for the regulation of labelling on foods. However, it is believed that the new technology... ...Read more »

Scientists from the University of Queensland (UQ) are set to revolutionise the fresh fruit industry with a new technology that converts gases into a powder form. Professor Bhesh Bhandari and PhD student Mr Binh Ho, from UQ’s School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, have developed a technology that will dramatically improve the safety, efficiency and effort involved in controlled ripening of fruit. Compressed ethylene gas is used to control ripen fruit such as bananas, mangoes, avocadoes, citrus... ...Read more »

Russian recycled packaging designers Evgeny Morgalev have created a carboard egg carton that perfectly boils an egg in two minutes while on-the-go. The device has been given the name of the Gogol Mogol. It is made from the typical carboard packaging used on conventional egg containers, but has inner chemical layers that trigger the necessary chemical reaction to cook the egg when a tab is pulled on the device. Inner layers include a layer infused with chemicals including calcium hydroxide, and another... ...Read more »