In the
BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment sub-project, the focus of the work in the area of innovative measurement methods was on analysing the composition of the microbiome in the food matrix and its storage-related changes using culture-independent methods. The metagenome analysis carried out by the
BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment proved to be a suitable method for detecting changes in the microbiome profile in the food matrix of minced pork. This made it possible to determine the influence of the tested storage temperatures (2
°Cshort fordegrees Celsius, 10
°Cshort fordegrees Celsius and 14
°Cshort fordegrees Celsius), the different packaging atmospheres (MAP 70 % O2 + 30 % CO2 and MAP 70 % N2 + 30 % CO2), meat maturation (7 days at 2
°Cshort fordegrees Celsius) and production conditions (in-house production by
MRIshort forMax Rubner Institute, external production by industrial slaughterhouses) could be demonstrated. However, it was also found that metagenome analysis is only of limited suitability for detecting breaks in the cold chain (e.g. on the second day of storage for 6 or 12 hours at 14
°Cshort fordegrees Celsius, otherwise 2
°Cshort fordegrees Celsius), as the changes in the microbiome profile were too small in this case. Furthermore, metagenome analysis allowed the functional annotation of microbial sequences in the food matrix, with the quality of the analysis depending on the sequencing depth, i.e. the proportion of bacterial reads detected.In addition, the
BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment played a key role in the design and establishment of a software architecture for the Zukunftslabor2030 platform. This comprises the following components: the openBIS data management platform, digital twins (forecast models) in FSKX format, a web application for users and the EPCIS event hub for standard-based communication between the various modules of the ZL2030 platform. The project demonstrated that the FKSX format developed by the
BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment is suitable for describing a wide variety of prediction models in a standardised manner, enabling the models to be executed in a cloud-based runtime environment. These execution environments can be operated as container-based systems on different cloud infrastructures and networked via APIs, so that suitable, isolated and tailor-made environments can be used for the heterogeneous FSKX models of the digital twins. The functionality of the ZL2030 platform was demonstrated in a proof of concept. Furthermore, the
BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, in collaboration with project partner benelog GmbH & Co. KG, has published a white paper describing the FSKX cloud platform used in the project for the execution of scientific models (10.5281/zenodo.15835206). The ZL2030 project is mentioned in it as an exemplary use case.