Living Freshness & Quality in Regional Fresh Produce Supply Chains

The project explores whether targeted food-grade bacterial cultures can reduce avoidable losses of fresh produce while delivering beneficial digestive support directly from daily food.  Together with regional food-system partners, we will test a biological freshness management approach to extend usable shelf life, reduce food waste, and improve access to high-quality fresh foods. The project evaluates technical feasibility, operational practicality, and potential impact on regional food supply chains.

Zoa Culture

Letizia Guarise

cummagnaletizia@gmail.com

Basel

Food waste remains a major challenge in urban and regional food systems. A significant share of losses occurs before food becomes unsafe, simply because freshness declines and products are no longer considered attractive, marketable, or suitable for serving. Fresh vegetables, fruit, and other highly perishable products are particularly affected. Current freshness management relies primarily on refrigeration, packaging, logistics optimisation, and conservative discard decisions. These approaches are effective but often result in avoidable losses of otherwise edible food. Our project addresses the systemic challenge of how regional food systems can provide affordable, high-quality fresh foods while reducing waste and resource use, and while simultaneously delivering gut-supportive bacterial cultures. We build on the hypothesis that biological freshness management using food-grade protective cultures could become an additional tool to reduce losses, strengthen regional food value chains, and improve access to fresh foods, while delivering wide access to the benefits of good gut bacteria directly onto daily food. This directly relates to the challenge of supporting regional food systems through new partnerships and innovative approaches that make healthy and sustainable food more widely available. By reducing avoidable losses of fresh produce, regional food value chains may become more resource-efficient, resilient, and economically viable.

Today, freshness is often managed through precautionary discard practices. Retailers, distributors, and food-service operators frequently remove products from circulation once visible quality starts to decline, even though the products may still be suitable for consumption. We want to explore whether biological freshness management can support a shift from reactive disposal to proactive freshness preservation. The project will test whether food-grade protective cultures can help maintain product quality for longer, thereby reducing unnecessary waste and increasing confidence in the usability of fresh produce. If successful, this approach could encourage distributors and food-service operators to manage freshness more actively and reduce avoidable losses throughout the supply chain.

Direct beneficiaries include: -Regional producers -Fresh produce distributors -Food-service operators -Consumers -Municipal and regional food systems Reducing losses of fresh products can improve economic efficiency, reduce resource waste and agricultural pressure, and increase the availability of high-quality and health-promoting foods. Beyond the pilot, the approach could be transferred to other food categories, supply chains, cities, and regions. The project could also provide a framework for integrating biological freshness management into regional food strategies, sustainability programmes, food waste reduction, and digestive support initiatives.

The specific application of ZOA's food-grade cultures for biological freshness management of fresh produce has not yet been systematically tested. This is the central question of the proposed project. However, both project partners bring relevant prior experience. HAFL's Bioconversion and Protective Cultures group has extensive experience in applying beneficial microbial cultures to food and agricultural systems. Previous projects have investigated the use of protective cultures and microbial consortia to improve stability, reduce spoilage, and enhance the quality of fresh and minimally processed foods, including fruits and vegetables such as strawberries and carrots. ZOA Culture has developed proprietary food-grade microbial culture systems and has gained experience in applying living cultures in food matrices. In parallel, HAFL and ZOA Culture are currently collaborating in an Innosuisse Innovation Cheque project investigating the effects of selected cultures on texture and flavour development in plant-based protein foods. These previous activities suggest that microbial cultures can positively influence product quality and stability. At the same time, they highlight the need for systematic testing under realistic fresh-produce conditions. The present project, therefore, focuses on validating whether biological freshness management can reduce quality losses and food waste in regional food supply chains.

The booster will be used to conduct a pilot study with selected fresh produce categories such as leafy vegetables, and berries. We will: -Select suitable food-grade protective cultures -Develop practical application protocols -Conduct controlled shelf-life trials -Quantify freshness indicators and food losses -Assess microbiological safety -Assess the viability of selected food-grade cultures throughout storage and at the expected point of consumption. -Evaluate operational feasibility with implementation partners. The most important assumption is that protective cultures can measurably reduce quality deterioration and discard rates under realistic storage conditions.  This assumption will be tested as primary research scope.  While the main experimental and implementation assessment focus is freshness preservation and food waste reduction, the project will also explore, leveraging on existing robust scientific literature, whether the selected beneficial cultures remain viable on fresh produce throughout the storage period, to bring effective probiotic benefits to consumers.

Our main learning goal is to determine whether biological freshness management can generate a meaningful reduction in product losses under practical conditions. A key success criterion will be a measurable reduction in discard rates or a measurable extension of the usable freshness window compared with untreated controls. If treated products show less than 10% improvement in either freshness retention or discard reduction compared with untreated controls, we would reconsider the suitability of this approach for fresh produce applications.

Research Partner: HAFL – Bern University of Applied Sciences (HAFL), Research Group Bioconversion and Protective Cultures. The project will be scientifically supported by the Research Group Bioconversion and Protective Cultures under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Heine. The group provides expertise in protective cultures, food microbiology, shelf-life extension, biopreservation, and food waste reduction. HAFL will support experimental design, microbiological analyses, freshness assessment, and data evaluation. Status: Confirmed project partner. Technology Partner: ZOA Culture ZOA Culture provides food-grade microbial cultures and application concepts that will be tested during the project. ZOA Culture and HAFL are already collaborating through an ongoing Innosuisse Innovation Cheque project investigating microbial cultures in plant-based food applications. Status: Confirmed project partner. Implementation Partner Buonvicini AG (target implementation partner). Buonvicini AG is a Swiss distributor of fresh fruits and vegetables and represents a highly relevant environment for testing biological freshness management under real-world distribution and storage conditions. We aim to evaluate selected produce categories such as herbs, leafy vegetables, and tomatoes within a practical supply-chain context. Status: Initial discussions have started. We intend to further develop this collaboration during the booster phase. Additional Partners Needed We would welcome support from Future Urban Society in identifying additional implementation partners from food distribution, food service, municipalities, or regional food-system initiatives interested in reducing food waste and improving access to fresh foods through innovative preservation approaches.

We hope to gain access to implementation partners, food-system actors, and experts who can help us evaluate the practical relevance and scaling potential of biological freshness management. In particular, we are interested in connections to food distributors, food-service organisations, municipalities, and regional food initiatives working on food waste reduction and sustainable food systems. Beyond technical validation, we want to understand whether this approach could become part of broader strategies to reduce food waste and improve access to fresh foods within regional food systems.

Letizia Guarise – ZOA Culture (Project Initiator and Main Contact) Letizia Guarise is the founder of ZOA Culture, a Swiss start-up dedicated to making fermentation accessible, practical, and relevant for everyday food systems. ZOA Culture explores how microbial ecosystems can contribute to unlocking the functionality of plant ingredients across nutritional, digestive, and freshness-preservation dimensions. Its field of work includes: natural food preservation, reduced food waste, improved resource use and more resilient food practices, delivery of beneficial probiotic cultures widely accessible through daily food, improved nutritional, sensorial, and digestive quality of plant-based product formulations. Letizia will coordinate the project, contribute expertise on microbial cultures and their application, support protocol development, and lead stakeholder engagement. HAFL – Bern University of Applied Sciences, Research Group Bioconversion and Protective Cultures The scientific activities will be conducted within the Research Group Bioconversion and Protective Cultures under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Heine. The group specialises in protective cultures, biopreservation, food microbiology, shelf-life extension, and food waste reduction along the food value chain. HAFL will lead experimental design, microbiological analyses, freshness assessment, data evaluation, and scientific validation. Together, the project combines ZOA Culture's entrepreneurial and culture-development expertise with HAFL's scientific expertise in food microbiology, protective cultures, and shelf-life extension.

The project team already combines expertise in protective cultures, food microbiology, fermentation, shelf-life assessment, and applied food innovation through the collaboration between ZOA Culture and HAFL's Research Group Bioconversion and Protective Cultures. During the booster, we would welcome additional input from experts in fresh produce logistics, food distribution, food waste reduction, and the implementation of food-system innovations. Such expertise could help us better understand adoption pathways, operational requirements, and opportunities for scaling successful approaches within regional food systems. We also welcome connections to relevant practitioners and organisations that can provide real-world perspectives on freshness management and food loss prevention.