Image-driven analysis that helps determine plant characteristics more intelligently, quickly, and accurately, and contributes to the quality control of medical microfluidic chips. These two projects receive funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
Published on: April 10, 2025
Together with the national government and the provinces of Overijssel and Gelderland, EFRO Oost is allocating over €1 million to these projects to potentially reduce the use of crop protection products and to support the development of medical chips. Including the companies’ own contributions, this represents an investment of more than €3.2 million in the regional economy.
Measuring and recording plant characteristics
The partners in the ‘Fenovation’ project are developing an image-driven digital process to determine plant characteristics (phenotypes). Fenovation is a combination of “phenotyping” and “innovation.” The project covers the entire process from image and data collection, data storage, to verification of results. This allows growers to quickly and accurately determine crop traits such as stem length, leaf size, and disease resistance, which can help reduce the use of crop protection products. The goal is to integrate image-driven analysis into existing breeding processes within three years. The consortium, consisting of three Gelderland-based companies—Fresh Forward Breeding (Huissen), Schoneveld Breeding (Wilp), and Agri Information (Wageningen)—receives a total grant of €501,353. The total project costs amount to €1,002,706.
Quality control of medical chips
The partners in the project ‘Vision Inspection for Volume Assembly (VIVA)’ are developing an image-driven inspection system for the assembly and quality control of microfluidic chips for medical applications. If a defective medical chip ends up in a final product, it can, in the worst case, lead to health damage or even death. Image analysis contributes to reliable assembly processes, thorough quality control, and high-quality end products, helping to prevent costly recalls. The project partners Medspray (Enschede), ProfTech (Hengelo OV), and Saxion University of Applied Sciences (Enschede) receive a grant of nearly €568,983. The total project costs amount to €1,137,965.
