In an era of climate change, security threats and increasing demands for resource efficiency, the need for rapid and reliable results is greater than ever. Current methods take several days – which can lead to production stoppages, discarded products and risks to health and the environment. New methods enable real-time analysis and create the conditions for safe drinking water and circular water management, where water is recycled and used more intelligently.

The transition lab will act as a catalyst for innovation – a place where technology meets practice and innovation is turned into real benefits. The focus is on creating robust decision-making tools, understanding organisational implications and influencing policy and legislation.

The project brings together a wide range of stakeholders – water utilities, authorities, researchers, industry and technology developers – who will work together to test, develop and implement new solutions.

The project is part of Water Wise Societies.

Objectives

• Establish a transition lab that moves us from slow, analogue to fast and secure digital quality controls for drinking water and other water sources.
• Pave the way for a fundamental change in how we assess microbial water quality – from slow, analogue cultivation methods to fast, digital techniques such as flow cytometry and qPCR.

Widespread misconceptions related to seafood, sustainability, and health pose challenges for both the industry and society at large, especially given Sweden’s new food strategy, which includes targets for increased seafood production. These targets need to be monitored—not only what is produced but also how much actually becomes food—yet current statistics are insufficient. While scientifically based information exists, it is scattered and often difficult for non-experts to interpret, creating a need to compile and make it accessible. This is the purpose of the Seafood Portal.

For the twenty most important stocks and species for Swedish production and/or consumption, the project will map data on 14 relevant parameters within three areas:

• Available assessments of stock status and ecosystem effects
• Content of desired and undesired substances
• Production, consumption and trade

The Seafood Portal will provide the industry with a tool to easily answer questions from customers, authorities, and investors, as well as enable evaluation of the food strategy’s seafood-related goals. At the same time, the portal will benefit the general public, students, media, and organizations by offering answers to common seafood-related questions. In the long term, the project aims to build trust and thereby contribute to increased consumption and production of sustainable seafood.

The SPARK project unites leading institutions from Sweden (RISE), the UK (Imperial College London, University of Reading, BEZOS Centre), and Singapore (A*STAR) to address five key challenges related to health effects of plant-based foods and diets:

1.  Health & Environmental Impact: Research on the long-term health effects and environmental impacts of plant-rich foods and diets is limited. Robust evidence is needed to inform policy and dietary recommendations.
2. Nutritional Quality & Bioavailability: Nutrient content and bioavailability (e.g., iron, zinc, protein) vary; processing may improve absorption but needs further study.
3. Consumer Acceptance & Flavour: Taste and texture strongly influence consumer choices, yet many products underperform, limiting adoption. Sensory improvements are essential.
4. Processing & Health Perception: Public debate persists around processed plant-based foods. Evidence is needed to guide policy and build trust.
5. Health-Environment Trade-offs: Healthy diets often have a lower environmental impact, but conflicts between health and sustainability goals may arise and must be addressed.

SPARK contributes to research and innovation to develop plant-rich foods and diets that are nutritious, appealing, and environmentally sustainable. The project aims to build a long-term international partnership that drives advancements in plant-based food innovation. The collaboration spans health, nutrition, flavour, sustainability, and consumer science, generating insights across cultural contexts. SPARK formalizes and scales up both existing and new collaborations, strengthening Sweden’s global role in sustainable food systems and health.

During the project, our goal is to initiate new sub-projects, and we welcome additional collaboration partners. Please feel free to contact us for more information!

The initial phase of the project will focus on identifying opportunities for developing a robust methodology to evaluate various production systems in terms of their impact on biodiversity—both in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. The overarching objective is to establish and apply a life cycle assessment (LCA) perspective, thereby enabling the quantification of biodiversity impacts per metric ton of farmed seafood. Alternative methodological approaches may however be required, based on state of knowledge and the availability of relevant data.

In a next step, the project will assess the most important species and production systems currently utilized in Sweden with respect to their biodiversity impacts. This evaluation aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current situation and to identify the sector’s potential for sustainable development. The number of case studies conducted will depend on data availability and time constraints. The findings will be contextualized by comparing them to other relevant food commodities.

The project will rely on existing data and be conducted in close collaboration with experts from academia, governmental agencies, and industry organizations to ensure the relevance and applicability of data, methodologies, and outcomes.

RISE Food Sustainability Database developed from RISE Food Climate Database

After 10 years, RISE Food Climate Database has been expanded with information on nutrient density and biodiversity to give food companies and public actors a broader planning and decision-making basis in their sustainability work. RISE Food Sustainability Database provides a better picture of the environmental impact of food and its nutritional content. In parallel, the carbon footprints in RISE Food Sustainability Database have also been developed and refined, for example with separate carbon footprints for land use change (LUC) for most of the raw materials/foods in the database.

Sustainability data for foods consumed in Sweden

Carbon footprints

The basis for the carbon footprints in RISE food climate database is life cycle assessments of more than 800 food products, representative for Swedish food consumption. The life cycle assessment (LCA) is an ISO-standardized method and each food product has been given a carbon footprint that shows the climate impact from its production chain. The carbon footprints are general (not developed for specific producers' products) and should be seen as an approximate value of the food product´s climate impact. The climate impact of products is usually called carbon footprint and is expressed here in kg carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) per kg of food.

The carbon footprints (kg CO₂e per kg food) are linked to and matched with the articles in the Swedish Food Agencies food database and the metadata that describes what the climate data represents in terms of origin and production methods. The total carbon footprint of a food product consists of the climate impact from its production, land use change (LUC), and transport to Sweden for imported foods. The four different carbon footprints (“production”, “transport”, “LUC” and “total”) are reported separately in RISE Food Sustainability Database.

Production emissions

The climate impact (kg CO₂e per kg food) of food production,from primary production (agriculture, fishery etc) to industry (where the food product is produced).

LUC emissions

The climate impact (kg CO₂e per kg food) from land use change (LUC) is calculated according to a RISE method, whish follows the standard SBTi FLAG.  

Transport emissions

The climate impact (kg CO₂e per kg food) from the transport to Sverige for imported food.

Biodiversity footprints

Biodiversity footprints expressed in PDF, Potentially Disappeared Fraction (fPDF per kg food) for various foods consumed in Sweden. PDF stands for Potentially Disappeared Fraction and describes the potential species loss caused by human land and water use plus climate change compared to a reference situation. PDF is originally an index between 0 and 1, which makes the footprints small and difficult to interpret. Therefore, we use the prefix femto (10^-15), fPDF, which makes the results easier to read.

Nutrient-Rich Food Index

The Nutrient-Rich Food (NRF) index is an indicator for assessing nutritional quality of foods. NRF index is a nutritional profiling system that ranks foods based on their nutritional composition and the daily nutritional intake for adults according to the Nordic nutrition recommendations. NRF index includes nutrients beneficial to health as well as nutrients detrimental to health at too high intakes. Thus, NRF index versions are named after the number of nutrients to encourage and limit; for example, NRF 11.3 is based on 11 nutrients to encourage and 3 nutrients to limit. NRF 11.3 is expressed per 100 g of food in the Swedish version of RISE Food Climate Database that include food items from the Swedish Food Agency food database.

A living Sustainability Database

RISE Food sustainability Database is updated annually and a helpdesk function is available year-round for questions etc.

Soil Microbiome and Functional Diversity

AGROSOIL explores how soil microbial communities contribute to weed suppression and ecosystem resilience. Greenhouse and field experiments assess microbial taxa involved in weed seed decay and crop–weed interactions. Functional traits of weed species are analyzed to understand how AEWM influences community composition and ecological functions.

Socio-Economic Evaluation

The project conducts social life cycle assessments and cost–benefit analyses to evaluate the viability of AEWM strategies. Stakeholder perspectives are integrated through workshops, surveys, and interviews, ensuring that proposed solutions are both ecologically effective and economically feasible.

Expected Impact

AGROSOIL contributes to the European Green Deal and Sustainable Development Goals by:

• Reducing chemical inputs and soil degradation.
• Enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem services.
• Supporting long-term adoption of agroecological practices.
• Providing open-access data and tools for research and policy development.

Partners and Funder

AGROSOIL is led by the Julius Kühn Institute in Germany. In addition to RISE, participating partners include the University of Lleida (UCL), the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO), Wageningen University and Research (WUR & WR), and the National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology (INIACSIC).

AGROSOIL is an EU partnership project initiated by the Agroecological Partnership, but funded by each participating member state. In Sweden, the funding is provided by FORMAS.

In AI-PRO, RISE and its industry partners aim to develop solutions that support more preventive approaches in various production processes. Instead of identifying problems after they occur, AI and smart sensors will help companies predict and avoid them in time, leading to more consistent quality, reduced waste, and lower energy consumption. 

Participating companies represent different sectors: 

• Oatly and Orkla from the food industry.
• Lantmännen from the agricultural sector.
• Höganäs from the steel industry.
• Sensor companies Incipientus och RHI Magnesita /Agellis contribute with sensors and valuable measurement data used to train the AI models. 

The companies involved share similar needs: they want to better understand how raw materials and process settings affect the final product and be able to adjust the process when conditions change. For example, Lantmännen aims to optimize grain drying to save energy and maintain good quality, while Höganäs wants to reduce slag carry-over in metal production. Oatly and Orkla are focused on maintaining high and consistent product quality despite variations in raw materials. 

The project will develop a common AI methodology that can be applied across industries. It  will be tested in real industrial environments. The AI models will identify relationships between raw materials, process settings, and product quality, identify anomalies, and support automated process control. 

AI-PRO will run from September 2025 to August 2028 and is funded by Vinnova.

Land-based aquaculture and seafood industries consume large amounts of water and thus also generate a wide range of residual water streams of varying quantity and quality. Some are extremely rich in salt and nutrients, such as phosphate, nitrogen and organic carbon. Current methods for wastewater treatment are very expensive and energy-intensive. In addition, valuable nutrients are lost from the food chain, and in the best case are instead used for low-value purposes such as biogas. At the same time, the demand for new and sustainable resources for the production of food, materials and energy is increasing.

Cultivation of microalgae in wastewater streams could solve this dual problem. Microalgae are microscopic organisms that have a unique ability to carry out photosynthesis and efficiently convert dissolved nutrients into biomass in the form of protein, omega-3 fatty acids, carbohydrates and carotenoids.

The specific aims of SEAlgaePower are to optimize pilot-scale algae cultivation and wastewater cleaning; develop biorefinery protocols for protein, lipid, and carbohydrate recovery from the microalgal biomass; and to develop microalgae-based product prototypes and ingredients in a bioprospecting manner. RISE will here focus specifically on the development of fiber-based materials for wound healing and regenerative medicine using high molecular weight carbohydrates and proteins as well as on the encapsulation of bioactive lipids, pigments, and peptides.