The Infrastructure for promoting Metrology in Food and Nutrition (METROFOOD-RI) is a distributed Research Infrastructure to provide high-quality metrology services, knowledge and tools in food and nutrition. It comprises an important cross-section of highly interdisciplinary and interconnected fields throughout the food value chain, including agri-food, sustainable development, food safety, quality, traceability and authenticity, environmental safety and human health. METROFOOD-RI consists of a physical infrastructure (P-RI) and an electronic infrastructure (e-RI) to coordinate and integrate existing networks of plants, laboratories, experimental fields/farms for crop production/animal breeding, small-scale plants for food processing and storage, kitchen-labs for food preparation.

METROFOOD-RI was cited as an emerging project in the ESFRI Roadmap 2016 and completed its Early Phase in 2017. Entered the ESFRI Roadmap 2018, METROFOOD-RI is currently in the Preparation Phase with a consortium partnership composed of research operators – Research Institutes, Universities, National Metrology Institutes, Institutes for Food Safety and Health Protection – located in 18 European Countries. Their common ambition is to create an array of services that will enhance the operation of each partner’s research facilities, offering access to top-class laboratories, plants and experimental facilities, promoting standardisation and harmonisation on measurements related to the agri-food field, and sharing, integrating and making interoperable knowledge and data on food.