Your Virtual Cold Chain Assistant
Funding. This project is funded by the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, The Rockefeller Foundation, and giz.
Duration. 2 years (2021-2022 for India, 2021-2023 for Nigeria).
Collaborations. BASE, Swiss Data Science Center, local service providers in India and Nigeria.
Contact. Thijs Defraeye (principal investigator).
Project background.
Your virtual cold chain assistant aims to use open access, data-science-based mobile application to save food, improve food quality, reduce CO2 emissions, and enhance the livelihood of smallholder farmers in India. By leveraging available farm input data such as weather and precipitation data, historical hygrothermal data in storage, data on the farming system, and so on, this project will use machine learning coupled with physics-based modeling to provide smallholder farmers and service providers with real-time food quality metrics such as remaining shelf life, weight loss, microbial spoilage, etc. and pre-and post-harvest market analytics. With this information, farmers can make informed decisions on when and how to sell their produce. At the same time, this project will give the service providers access to sustainable, energy-efficient, clean, affordable, and easy to operate refrigeration systems.
Publications.
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Press release on VCCA launches in Nigeria
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Press release on Nigeria mission
- Media release and report of the The Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance
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Media release from BASE
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List of awardees on data.org