The study presents a comprehensive examination of the recent advancements in the field of wine production using the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Blockchain Technology (BCT). The paper aims to provide insights into the implementation of these technologies in the wine supply chain and to identify the potential benefits associated with their use. The study highlights the various applications of IoT, AI, and BCT in wine production, including vineyard management, wine quality control, and supply chain management. It also discusses the potential benefits of these technologies, such as improved efficiency, increased transparency, and reduced costs. The study concludes by presenting the framework proposed by the authors in order to overcome the challenges associated with the implementation of these technologies in the wine supply chain and suggests areas for future research. The proposed framework meets the challenges of lack of transparency, lack of ecosystem management in the wine industry and irresponsible spending associated with the lack of monitoring and prediction tools. Overall, the study provides valuable insights into the potential of IoT, AI, and BCT in optimizing the wine supply chain and offers a comprehensive review of the existing literature on the study subject.
Wang Zeng, Yuzhi Wang, Kaibo Liang, J. Li · 5 authors
Abstract Advancing cold‐chain medicine logistics and emergency supplies management necessitates a robust blockchain‐based traceability system. This specialized information system is essential for enhancing quality control and operational efficiency. Despite challenges like insufficient supplies, ineffective distribution, and delays, blockchain's transparency and traceability offer significant potential to revolutionize national emergency management. This paper presents a blockchain‐based traceability system tailored for cold‐chain medicine logistics. This system achieves traceability and automatic medicine quality assessment by integrating blockchain principles and leveraging hazard analysis theory combined with IoT technology. This system also enhances data reliability with a multi‐sensor data fusion algorithm, improving temperature accuracy beyond conventional methods. Additionally, the feasibility and necessity of integrating blockchain into cold‐chain pharmaceutical traceability processes is thoroughly examined. The proposed system fulfills traceability needs for emergency cold‐chain medicine while addressing industry challenges.
Anum Nawaz, Liguan Wang, Muhammad Irfan, Tomi Westerlund
Drug supply chains have been facing severe issues as counterfeit product cases are increasing exponentially. A supply chain management system that ensures transparency, reliability, and provenance of drugs would increase the trustworthiness of the whole industry. One solution to all three needs is utilizing blockchain-based distributed ledger technologies (DLTs). Even though DLTs are emerging as an ideal infrastructure for multi-stakeholder supply chain applications, they still need to be more mature to address the specific challenges specific to each use case. In this article, we propose a distributed blockchain-based framework, PHTrack, leveraging hyperledger sawtooth as a drug supply chain traceability system. Hyperledger sawtooth addresses scalability issues by offering a robust foundation to support large-scale drug supply chain operations in a modular way for it’s each participating stakeholder. Furthermore, it simplifies the integration process with existing systems, even those employing different technologies, thereby facilitating a smoother transition to DLTs. The design of PHTrack is oriented towards minimizing resource consumption throughout the process, particularly within hyperledger sawtooth nodes. Additionally, it incorporates quantum secure off-chain communication for peer-to-peer (P2P) communication. A set of experiments was conducted to validate the proposed framework. Experiments have shown that PHTrack provides reliable and comprehensive drug provenance as well as real-time drug supply chain tracking.
Purpose: This paper aims to develop a coffee supply chain traceability system based on Blockchain (BC) and Machine Learning (ML) with the aim of ensuring the quality of coffee beans production. BC functions to ensure supply chain performance, while the ML model ensures product quality.Design/methodology/approach: Smart Contracts will be built on the Ethereum Virtual Machine BC network based on Ethereum. The ML model to identify good and bad green coffee beans will be built using different YOLO algorithms, which will go through training and validation stages, namely using the k-fold cross validation method. The ML model algorithm is based on Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) using YOLOv5m, YOLOv6m and YOLOv7. The best model will be chosen based on the results of cross-validation with test data in the form of coffee image data that the model has never seen (unseen data). The whole process of building the ML model is done on the Google Collab Pro+ Virtual Machine.Findings: YOLOv5m outperformed the other models in both non-augmented and augmented training datasets, highlighting the proficiency of YOLOv5m in managing compact datasets and its resilience in the face of data augmentation, positioning it as a prime selection for quality discernment tasks within the realm of green coffee beans. The smart contracts offer an all-encompassing approach for user management, monitoring product status, and presenting traceability data within the framework of coffee plantation administration.Originality/value: This research contributes to the development of blockchain network as a solution to implement traceability systems along coffee supply chains in Indonesia. Moreover, it shows that while blockchain can ensure the process of production along the coffee supply to follow certain guidelines, machine learning can verify whether the product that was produced by utilizing BC is of high quality/acceptable.
The issue of food safety has become a crucial public health issue worldwide. Blockchain technology allows consumers to track the flow of food and effectively record the sources and processes of their products, and reduces the elimination of associated food fraud phenomena, such as counterfeiting and dilution. Using signaling theory, structural equation model method and an online sample of 415 Chinese participants, this study investigates the impact of how blockchain-based food traceability system influences consumers' online purchase intentions of organic agricultural products. The results illustrate that: (1) blockchain-based food traceability system can increase consumers' willingness to buy organic agricultural products. (2) Blockchain-based food traceability system can increase consumers' product quality perceptions, product trust and environmental information transparency perceptions. (3) Product quality perceptions, product trust and environmental information transparency perceptions can also promote consumers' purchase intentions. (4) Product quality perceptions, product trust and environmental information transparency perceptions all have significant mediation effects in the in the relationship between blockchain-based food traceability system and consumer purchase intention. The findings of the research are valuable information for business managers and retailers who want to increase sales of their products, as well as helping relevant policy makers to achieve the ultimate goal of green and sustainable development in the food industry.
Abstract Trust, safety, and quality are among the most important factors in the agri-food supply chains. Traceability is a powerful tool to ensure them, but implementing a transparent and effective system is a complex operation. As a result, innovative systems, like blockchain, could be introduced. Although research on its impacts in the agri-food is recent, the literature appears fragmented. The objective is to investigate the studied aspects of the blockchain adoption in agri-food, with the purpose of retrieving meaningful considerations about the current state of the art about strategic high-value supply chains, such as wine and olive oil, particularly subjected to fraudulent behaviors. A productivity measurement was applied to retrieve the evolution of the number of documents through the years, the most productive countries, the sources, the research areas, and the most significant papers in terms of number of citations received. To understand the research trends, a co-occurrence analysis was employed. Results show that most of the existing studies focus on the role of blockchain in the resolution of some critical issues as food safety and frauds. While wine is currently an emerging sector in which this approach can be implemented, olive oil still needs more attention. In both cases, blockchain could potentially help to support the profitability and sustainability of the production. The research underlines the importance of focusing on the environmental and social dimension of the blockchain phenomenon and the use of technology to improve the efficiency of agri-food chains and reduce waste and resource use.
feta cheese is a Greek protected designation of origin (PDO) product that is produced in three main phases: milk collection, cheese preparation and maturation, and product packaging. Each phase must be aligned with quantitative rules, stemming from the legislation framework and best practices. The production complexity, the increased production cost, centralised and monolithic traceability systems, and the lack of a systematic monitoring framework have made dairy products a commodity with increased frequency of food fraud. Given the context of the dairy section in Greece, this study aims to examine (a) whether it is possible to model the end-to-end process of PDO feta cheese considering production rules to develop a trustworthy blockchain-based traceability system (b) how to associate the (‘easy-to-retrieve’, operational) traceability data with the (difficult-to-assess) product characteristics meaningful to the consumer, (c) how to design a technical solution ensuring that information is accessible by the stakeholders and the consumer, while minimising blockchain-related delay, and (d) how to design a graphical user interface and offer tools to consumers so that traceability information is communicated effectively and they can verify it through access to the blockchain. In terms of methods, we analyse and model the process steps, identify measurable, operational parameters and translate the legislative framework into rules. These rules are designed and codified as blockchain smart contracts that ensure the food authenticity and compliance with legislation. The blockchain infrastructure consists of the private Quorum blockchain that is anchored to the public infrastructure of Ethereum. Mechanisms to address scalability in terms of dynamic data volumes, effective data coding, and data verification at the edge as well as relevant limitations are discussed. Consumers are informed about traceability information by using QR codes on food packaging and can verify the data using the blockchain tools and services.
The wheat crop that fulfills 35% of human food demand is facing several problems due to a lack of transparency, security, reliability, and traceability in the existing agriculture supply chain. Many systems have been developed for the agriculture supply chain to overcome such issues, however, monopolistic centralized control is the biggest hurdle to realizing the use of such systems. It has eventually gained consumers' trust in branded products and rejected other products due to the lack of traceable supply chain information. This study proposes a blockchain-based framework for supply chain traceability which provides trustable, transparent, secure, and reliable services for the wheat crop. A crypto token called wheat coin (WC) has been introduced to keep track of transactions among the stakeholders of the wheat supply chain. Moreover, an initial coin offering (ICO) of WC, crypto wallets, and an economic model are proposed. Furthermore, a smart contract-based transaction system has been devised for the transparency of wheat crop transactions and conversion of WC to fiat and vice versa. We have developed the interplanetary file system (IPFS) to improve data availability, security, and transparency which stores encrypted private data of farmers, businesses, and merchants. Lastly, the results of the experiments show that the proposed framework shows better performance as compared to previous crop supply chain solutions in terms of latency to add-blocks, per-minute transactions, average gas charge for the transaction, and transaction verification time. Performance analysis with Bitcoin and Ethereum shows the superior performance of the proposed system.
This study addresses the challenge of counterfeit goods in sustainable supply chains and its impact on achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal of "ensuring sustainable consumption and production." By utilizing a combined methodology of qualitative data from in-depth interviews with industry experts, supply chain professionals, and technology specialists, along with quantitative data from literature and case studies, the research explores the applicability of blockchain technology in countering counterfeiting within supply chains. An implementation framework is developed, considering industry-specific barriers and mitigation measures. It investigates enablers, barriers, implementation strategies, and monitoring plans, focusing on stakeholder incentives. Additionally, a framework for blockchain-based traceability is presented, promoting visibility, authentication, and accountability to combat counterfeit goods in sustainable supply chains. The study provides valuable insights for securing supply chains, protecting consumers, and advancing industry sustainability within the manufacturing context. The recommended framework leverages blockchain's potential to revolutionize supply chain integrity and address the issue of counterfeit products effectively.
Blockchain is a distributed digital ledger technology that allows for the immutable and auditable logging of transactions without needing a central authority or centralized database. First introduced in 2008 as the technology behind the digital currency Bitcoin, blockchain has now found use in a wide range of sectors. Modern agriculture supply networks have emerged to accommodate intricate interactions between regional actors and the agricultural environment. Interactions between various participants in the supply chain, including those involved in manufacturing, processing, and delivery. One of the main reasons fraud happens so often in agriculture is the lack of transparency in the supply chain. Businesses that aren’t transparent run the risk of losing money, alienating their customers, and seeing their brands decline in value. To encourage the growth of an efficient and trustworthy trading environment, several fundamental adjustments to the current supply chain architecture are necessary. The potential for blockchain technology to enhance food and agricultural supply chain transparency is well acknowledged. Companies utilize IoT and blockchain to create more equitable, sustainable, and customer-friendly food manufacturing systems. In this current work, a blockchain-based decentralized application (dApp), ‘ASBlock’, is developed for agricultural-based supply chain management. The primary focus of this developed application is to bring transparency and security to all participating users of the application; the users of this application include farmers or producers, suppliers or retailers, hotels, and end users. The performance analysis shows that the average gas utilization of the proposed ASBlock dApp is ∼ 2.8 ⋆ 104. The average smart contract execution time for all use cases is ∼ 112sec.
This Research Paper seeks to examine the possibilities of blockchain technology. For use in the field of restaurant food tracking and safety. Public health risks and economic costs are at stake when foodborne illness outbreaks occur, making food safety a top priority in the food industry. It can be difficult to quickly identify and address possible concerns about using traditional food traceability systems due to inefficiencies, data discrepancies, and a lack of transparency. In this study, we introduce a novel blockchain-based system developed especially for the purpose of tracking restaurant food. The blockchain decentralised consensus, immutability, and smart contracts are put to use in this system to provide trustworthy and transparent traceable infrastructure. Real-time monitoring and data collection along the food supply chain become possible when the blockchain architecture is combined with the Internet of Things (IoT) devices and RFID technology. We show that our proposed blockchain-based traceability solution is practical and efficient through a thorough assessment and validation procedure. The outcomes show that the system not only improves data quality and reliability but also drastically decreases the time and resources needed for food traceability. In addition, patrons are more likely to return to eateries that place a premium on food safety when they are given more information about the establishment's practises. Additionally, we discuss scalability, data privacy, and interoperability concerns that may arise in future implementations and provide some first ideas for overcoming these issues.
Supply chain management (SCM), product traceability, and product quality certification are some of the initial prominent uses of blockchain technology. This is because blockchain technology is built on trust and cannot be changed. The popularity of blockchain technology is increasing as it is trustworthy and cannot be changed; hence making traceability easier for information such as where food came from, thus essential for managing the agricultural food supply chain (SC). On the contrary, suggested SCM systems premised on smart contract technology and blockchain tend to be specifically apply to production and production processes. Through qualitative research, this paper suggests framework for adoption of smart contracts based on Ethereum in the agri-food SC, with the aim to establish means to adopt blockchain for checking food quality and origins in the agri-food supply chain. Remix IDE is utilised to build and test the smart contract. The significance of the framework is realised through ensuring the traceability of product safety and quality.
Crop tracking and traceability are crucial aspects of the modern agriculture supply chain, ensuring the safety and authenticity of products for consumers while improving efficiency and reducing waste. This paper presents a secure and efficient solution for crop tracking in agriculture by leveraging blockchain technology. The proposed system employs distributed ledger technology to record and verify the journey of crops from the field to the consumer, enhancing transparency and accountability. We explore the integration of smart contracts to automate key supply chain processes, such as quality assessment and payment settlement. Our solution not only strengthens the security of crop data but also streamlines the supply chain, reducing administrative overhead. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach through a practical implementation, highlighting the benefits of blockchain in agriculture supply chain management.
Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize forestry by providing a secure and transparent method of tracking and verifying the origin and movement of forest products. This could help combat forestry issues such as illegal logging, deforestation, and label fraud. In this study, transparency, and the associated certification of sustainable forest management, as well as proof of legality of raw material is investigated. The adoption of blockchain technology in forestry is still in its infancy, and challenges include ensuring the accuracy of the data stored in the blockchain and the participation of all relevant stakeholders in the supply chain. Overall, blockchain technology offers great potential for successful deployment in the timber supply chain and could help promote sustainability and preserve biodiversity. This paper provides an overview of blockchain technology, considers requirements for forestry and timber industries, discusses necessary digitization aspects and refers to existing applications.
Kenneth L. Armas, Bren C. Bondoc, Rhea Lyn La Penia
In the ever-evolving landscape of global agricultural supply chains, ensuring traceability, transparency, and sustainability is paramount to guaranteeing food safety, combating fraud, and meeting consumer demands. The Philippine onion industry, a vital component of the nation's horticultural sector, grapples with challenges related to traceability and transparency that impact customer trust and economic sustainability. While the adoption of smart contract platforms has revolutionized traceability and transparency in various agricultural sectors worldwide, their potential in the Philippine onion market remains underutilized. This study employs a comprehensive meta-analysis approach to evaluate the existing traceability and transparency mechanisms within the Philippine onion industry, drawing insights from a diverse set of studies. The meta-analysis reveals a consistently positive impact of these mechanisms on traceability and transparency. The findings, supported by a range of studies, underscore the value of these mechanisms in improving product quality, supply chain efficiency, and transparency. The study further investigates the potential impact of smart contract platforms in enhancing traceability and transparency throughout the onion industry's supply chain. Meta-analysis results suggest that the adoption of smart contract platforms holds promise in furthering these objectives. Through automated record-keeping and real-time data sharing, smart contracts have the potential to address existing challenges related to data fragmentation and limited technological integration. Identifying barriers to smart contract platform adoption in the context of traceability and transparency, the study proposes a set of strategic initiatives and recommendations. These recommendations cater to various stakeholders, including government bodies, academic institutions, local authorities, onion farmers, and industry players, aiming to promote the widespread adoption of smart contract platforms. This study extends beyond the confines of the Philippine onion industry, offering valuable insights into the role of smart contract platforms in enhancing traceability, transparency, and sustainability within agricultural supply chains. As the world works towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, this research contributes to the realization of "Zero Hunger" and "Responsible Consumption and Production" by promoting transparent and sustainable supply chains. By bridging the gap in understanding the potential of smart contract platforms in enhancing traceability and transparency, this study paves the way for innovative solutions, inspiring trust, and fostering sustainable farming practices within the onion industry and, potentially, in similar sectors worldwide.
Ranran Dang, Hui Li, Ao Yang, Zhao-Chen Ma · 6 authors
High-value commodities, such as luxury goods, artworks, and jewelry, face unique challenges in terms of traceability, transparency, and authenticity due to their distinctiveness and high value. This study aims to propose an innovative solution for the high-value commodity supply chain by integrating elements of consortium blockchain technology, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized identities (DIDs). We utilize consortium blockchain technology to build a supply chain management system with digital twinning features, where each user possesses an immutable DID. The system leverages NFTs as digital twins for commodities, utilizing smart contracts to record production and logistics information, ensuring transaction transparency and credibility. Simultaneously, the introduction of DID) enhances the security of user identity information on the supply chain. This comprehensive solution integrates consortium blockchain, NFTs, and decentralized identities, providing a higher level of security, traceability, and user control for the high-value commodity supply chain.
Yan Li, Yun Lin, Ming K. Lim, Weiqing Xiong · 7 authors
To ensure the safety of fresh food, the cold chain logistics is widely utilised, which can provide a low temperature environment. However, due to the high energy consumption, how to reduce carbon emission of cold chain logistics to develop sustainable distribution has become the research focus. In response, this study proposes an intelligent distribution system for cold chain logistics to achieve green operations. Specifically, the framework of the intelligent system based on blockchain technology is proposed to improve operational efficiency and enhance food traceability. Meanwhile, an electric vehicle routing optimisation model taking into account carbon emission is deployed in the intelligent system to plan the distribution routes. The suggested optimisation model seeks to reduce the total cost, including fixed, spoilage, refrigeration, punishment, queuing, charging and carbon emission costs. Furthermore, an ant colony algorithm is embedded in the intelligent system to help with distribution routes design. Finally, this study combines a real case to discuss the performance of the intelligent system, and the results show that the proposed system can significantly reduce distribution cost and carbon emission. Managers can use the suggested intelligent system to design distribution routes and monitor the distribution process.
The globalization of food markets has led companies to buy products not only locally, but also from other corners of the world. This has introduced complexity into supply chains, as products have to move longer distances and pass through more companies before reaching the end consumer. The meat industry has been no different. Events such as animal disease outbreaks have diminished consumer confidence in the industry and the supply chain. Coupled with this, consumers started demanding "more transparent" meat products. This has led companies to think about new traceability systems, which continue to enforce food safety and health rules, but at the same time enhance and make transparent to the consumer the origin and constitution of their products. This article proposes a traceability system in the agri-food (meat industry) with a multi-chain architecture, among them, blockchain. The use of blockchain in the traceability system helped to mitigate the omission of relevant data for the traceability process, allowing us to guarantee the immutability, reliability, and transparency of the data along the value chain. At the same time, the system was able to reduce the time of the traceability process by giving the user the possibility to access the traced information via a unique product identifier.
Guixia Xiao, Normalia Samian, Muhammad Faiz Mohd Faizal, Muhammad Alif Zakwan Mohd As’ad · 9 authors
Food security, as defined by the United Nations' Committee on World Food Security, means that “all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life”. Food security is not just ensuring food sufficiency, but also ensuring the quality and the reliability of supply chains which have become more complex with diversified sources of farm productions. Some common issues in food supply chains are lacking efficient traceability of product origins and distributions. Blockchain is an emerging technology for the agricultural supply chain which could monitor food quality and safety by digitally tracking data and processes of material resources. Meanwhile, the Internet of Things (IoT) system is used for diagnosis and control in smart agriculture such as crop growth observation that can produce good quality and sustainable farm production. This work proposes a framework of the integration of blockchain with IoT to improve the reliability of food supply chain (FSC) by focusing on optimizing the consensus algorithm of blockchain. The expected outcome is to produce an efficient traceability and higher quality transactions which can integrate all procedures and dealings in real-time processes across the FSC.
Blockchain technology has been adopted to improve traceability and authenticity in wine supply chains (WSCs). However, whether through outsourcing or self-implementation of a blockchain-based wine traceability system (BTS), there are significant costs involved, as well as concerns regarding consumer privacy. Motivated by observations of real-world practice, we explore the value of blockchain in enhancing traceability and authenticity in WSCs through a Stackelberg game-theoretical analysis. By comparing the equilibrium solutions of the scenarios with and without blockchain, we uncover the value of blockchain in tracing wine products. Our findings show that blockchain adoption can increase WSC prices under certain conditions. We derive the threshold for a third-party BTS service fee that determines blockchain adoption for tracing wine products and reveal the moderating effect of consumer traceability preferences and privacy concerns. Furthermore, the investigation of who should lead the implementation of BTS finds that the equal cost sharing between the manufacturer and the retailer results in no difference in BTS implementation leadership. Otherwise, the manufacturer always benefits from taking the lead in the implementation of BTS, and the retailer should undertake a leadership role in BTS implementation if they need to bear higher costs.
Regulatory authorities, consumers, and producers alike are alarmed by the issue of food safety, which is a matter of international concern. The conventional approaches utilized in food quality management demonstrate deficiencies in their capacity to sufficiently address issues related to traceability, transparency, and accountability. The emergence of blockchain technology (BCT) has provided a feasible approach to tackle the challenge of regulating food safety. This research paper presents a methodology for implementing blockchain technology to establish risk traceability in the context of monitoring, tracing, and authenticating agricultural products. The proposed system underwent a comprehensive evaluation, which placed significant emphasis on simulation parameters and assessment standards. The aim of the study was to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system through the assessment of various quantitative metrics, including throughput, latency, and resource utilization. The Hyperledger Fabric and Hyperledger Caliper were employed in the formulation and assessment of algorithms intended for agricultural supply chain management. The configuration comprising two entities and two peers achieved the highest write throughput (205.87 transactions per second; TPS), thereby demonstrating the network’s effective transaction processing capability. In a two-organization, two-peer system, the mean latency for read operations exhibited variability spanning from 0.037 to 0.061 s, contingent upon the transaction rates and accounting for the duration needed for network processing and validation. The results were visually depicted, offering a distinct demonstration of the system’s efficacy under various conditions. This study presents a quantitative analysis that illustrates the efficacy of the blockchain system in enhancing the traceability of agricultural products across the entire supply chain. The results of this research suggest that the implementation of blockchain technology could potentially enhance both the security and efficacy of food supply management.
As the complexity of the global food supply chain continues to grow, ensuring food quality and safety has become an important challenge for the global food industry.Food quality and safety traceability is a key methodology that can be used to track the origin and quality of food to ensure food safety.Meanwhile, blockchain technology, as a distributed ledger technology, provides new opportunities for food traceability.This study aims to explore how to integrate blockchain technology and data fusion analysis to improve the efficiency and accuracy of food quality and safety traceability.This paper first reviews the advantages of blockchain technology in food traceability and introduce the key concepts of data fusion analysis.Then, this paper proposes a blockchain-based framework for food quality and safety traceability, describing in detail the process of data collection, cleaning, fusion and analysis.Through practical case studies, this paper demonstrates the application of the framework in the field of grain quality and safety, and presents the fusion analysis results.Finally, the paper discusses future directions, including technical challenges, regulatory implications, and sustainability considerations.This study provides strong support for the integration of food quality and safety traceability and blockchain technology, which is expected to contribute to the further development of global food security and quality management.