3rd IMEKOFOODS Conference

The third international IMEKOFOODS conference was organized in Thessaloniki from 1^st-4^th October 2017. The IMEKOFOOD conference brings together scientists working on development of methods and approaches that reveal qualitative characteristics of foods, refresh the knowledge base and explore the innovation of issues surrounding measurements related to food components and contaminants.There were more than 280 participants present from 22 countries with 80 oral and 78 poster presentations.

The presentations were organized into following sessions:

• FoodOmics,
• Analytical approaches for food contaminants and risk assessment
• FT-IR-RAMAN- Other spectroscopic techniques
• Elemental and isotopic analysis for food traceability and authenticity
• Current and future needs in industry and official control laboratories
• Novel methods, markers, devices and services
• Measurement uncertainty
• Antioxidants and other bioactive compounds
• Experimental design
• Sensory analysis
• Food chemistry, technology and analysis
• Current needs in oils and fats analysis
• OLEUM – better solutions to protect olive oil quality and authenticity

In the frame of FoodOmics – Food Composition Databanks session, The development of FoodEXplorer – (A EuroFIR data interchange tool for searching and retrieving multiple food composition databases  – Westenbrink, S., Kadvan A., Korousic Seljak, B., Moller, A., Ireland, J., Glibetic, M., Mantur, A., Roe, M., Finglas, P.)  was presented.

The audience was introduced with the mission and work of EuroFIR on field of harmonization and standardization of food composition databases.  The EuroFIR Food Data Platform with its basic pillars as the Food Composition Database Management, the harmonized thesauri system, the food description system and the data Interchange Standards and FoodExplorer web tool development were described. The presentation also provided information about the collection of 30 European and non European food composition databases harmonized and standardized in this tool (food items and chemical components, Langual descriptors), about the implemented quality management system and about the simultaneous search and data comparison facilities and data download options. The presentation highlighted the importance of harmonized food and value documentation regarding to sources and quality of the data which is implemented in FoodEXplorer. The benefits of the FoodEXplorer, the wide range of applicability in field of research and in other nutritional software tools and the importance of further work on updated datasets, improved data documentation and dissemination were also presented to the audience.