As part of the Teagasc Thought Leaders series, Catriona Boyle spoke with Ruth Hamill about the work carried out by her team across a broad range of foods and technologies.
Dr Ruth Hamill is Acting Head of the Food Quality and Sensory Science Department in Teagasc, which has sites at Ashtown, Dublin and Moorepark in Cork.
Ruth’s research applies innovative scientific approaches to enhance understanding of the factors contributing to meat and product quality variation. She also explores opportunities for technical innovation in added-value products.
Ruth leads the Digitalisation Theme in the industry-led Meat Technology Ireland (MTI) II centre for research, where she works on evaluating -omics, sensors and AI-enabled computer vision to boost efficiency, decision support and sustainability in red meat processing. In addition, as a Research Ireland Sustainable Food Systems CoCentre-funded investigator, she leads projects assessing pork carcass and meat quality from native and circular feed ingredients.
You can find out more in the video below:
How do your team’s research areas connect?
We cover a broad range of food research and address research challenges across several scientific domains, including meat science, cereal and bakery, sensory and flavour chemistry, plant-based, dairy and beverages.
Our team’s work focuses on understanding food quality through food process innovation and the application of sensory science and flavour chemistry. Digitalisation is a cross-cutting theme that supports identifying the properties affecting quality.
The department’s research contributes directly to industry innovation, consumer understanding, and national food policy objectives.
How is digitalisation transforming food research?
Digitalisation, which includes adoption of industry 5.0 technologies such as data analytics, sensors, and automation is creating new research possibilities with diverse applications in the food sector.
In our team, we have a significant focus on research on red meat, prepared consumer foods and beverages. A key technology area that has rapidly advanced in recent years is AI-enabled vision systems. Food is inherently complex and variable, and, in the case of meat processing, the biological variability of the high value raw materials has proven challenging to vision systems.
Now, underpinned by developments in deep learning and edge computing, AI-enabled vision approaches – including spectral imaging – offer enhanced prospects for real-time visibility of quantitative and qualitive information on beef carcasses, providing a pathway towards enhanced accuracy of product monitoring, sortation and automation in meat processing. This helps industry meet evolving customer demands in more efficient and sustainable ways.
What benefits come from using 3D imaging of food?
Within foods, textural performance and sensory quality are strongly influenced by the structure of the food matrix. Researchers in our department are using X-ray computed tomography, coupled with immersive 3D visualisation, to ‘step inside’ prepared consumer foods such as gluten-free bakery products, meat carcass primal cuts and ground meat products, to understand how formulation and processing affect the structure to influence quality.
What’s known as digital sensory science, includes the use of eye tracking and measuring the emotional reactions of consumers with galvanic skin response sensors; while application of virtual and extended reality for consumer assessment of foods is an important focus for our team and offers significant possibilities to provide a sensory experience that is reflective of the real world and helps understand how consumer liking changes for some foods depending on the setting.
Why are multidisciplinary collaborations essential?
Through our multidisciplinary team, advanced facilities, and extensive national and international collaborations, our team works to provide scientific knowledge and technical innovation to support Ireland’s agri‑food sector. For example, our sensory programme has resulted in the largest genotyped sensory database of red meat in the world.
Our activities are supported by advanced analytical technologies, pilot‑scale processing equipment, and 3D-imaging capabilities. An important focus is adapting and tailoring these advanced technical approaches for different food matrices and innovation challenges.
Where are there some important innovation opportunities your team is working on?
There are great opportunities to add value in both fresh and prepared foods by leveraging the equipment and expertise of a range of teams within the department including the Prepared Consumer Foods Centre, the Meat Industry Development Unit, test bakery, sensory suites, and the flavour chemistry suite.
Much of our research is focused on advancing circularity in the sustainable food system via various strategies, including upcycling side streams into valuable functional ingredients for prepared consumer foods – including bakery, meat and plant-based products. Another area of work is assessing the impact of local and circular feed ingredients on pork carcass and meat quality.
We are focused on application of flavour chemistry to identify unique signatures of provenance and quality in Irish produce ranging from pasture-based dairy and red meat to beverages including Irish whiskey congeners.
Our team has a leading international profile in research supporting development of targeted bakery products for specific consumer cohorts including the ‘free from’ category, with innovation and commercialisation of many of our research outputs in the areas of gluten-free bakery, low FODMAP diets and life stage nutrition, such as healthy ageing.
Another important opportunity for innovation is in meeting the desire of consumers to increase the proportion of plant-based options, in particular protein, in their diets. We have an important research focus on quality and supporting innovation in value-add in the fresh meat category with dry aging and application of emerging technologies to accelerate the process of flavour development.
Register now for the upcoming ‘Meat Matters’ event at Teagasc Food Research Centre, Ashtown.
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