Abstract
In recent years, modelling techniques have become more frequently adopted in the field of food processing, especially for cereal-based products, which are among the most consumed foods in the world. Predictive models and simulations make it possible to explore new approaches and optimize proceedings, potentially helping companies reduce costs and limit carbon emissions. Nevertheless, as the different phases of the food processing chain are highly specialized, advances in modelling are often unknown outside of a single domain, and models rarely take into account more than one step. This paper introduces the first high-level overview of modelling techniques employed in different parts of the cereal supply chain, from farming to storage, from drying to milling, from processing to consumption. This review, issued from a networking project including researchers from over 30 different countries, aims at presenting the current state of the art in each domain, showing common trends and synergies, to finally suggest promising future venues for research.
Highlights
The food supply chain is usually considered as a system including organizations, people, activities, information, and resources that interact with each other for the purpose of moving food or a food service from suppliers to consumers [1]
The objective of this review is to present main research streams for analyzing food models in the cereal chain, and identify promising future research perspectives
While studies on the effects of microwaves on cereal can be found in literature [41], along with mathematical modelling of microwave drying on other agricultural products [42], for cereals only a few predictive models of microwave drying are available [43,44]
Summary
The food supply chain is usually considered as a system including organizations, people, activities, information, and resources that interact with each other for the purpose of moving food or a food service from suppliers to consumers [1]. A generic Input-Process-Output (IPO) model of the cereal chain is presented in Figure 1 depicting main processes and products’ transformation flow, from seeds to final cereal-based products It clearly identifies five links in the cereal supply chain: farms, storage areas, mills, food processing plants, and consumers as final actors in the supply chain pipeline. The objective of this review is to present main research streams for analyzing food models in the cereal chain, and identify promising future research perspectives For this particular review we focus exclusively on mathematical and statistical models, that is, Foods 2021, 10, 82 representations of systems that can simulate possible outcomes of processes, or representations of products that attempt to predict their properties, both of which can be run on general-purpose software systems. In order to deal with such complex problems related to the food chain, modelling of the various links of the chain, as well as the whole chain, is urgently needed, to plan efficient optimizations, flexibility, and resilience in our food systems
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