Maintaining a healthy diet requires sufficient consumption of fruits and vegetables. However, nowadays, the fast pace of modern lifestyle discourages individuals from reaching their optimal daily intake via consumption of fresh fruits/vegetables, ultimately creating an increasing demand for natural, nutritive, healthy and personalized ready-to-eat snacks. It is also an accepted actuality that there is a lack of healthy food snacks for personalized nutrition in the market. Hence, the development of such products, which can also be tailor-made to the needs of specific groups (young children, elderly, diabetic, sportive etc.), is a long-awaiting innovation. FRIETS project aims in training crossdisciplinary scientists from 5 European countries, in collaboration with international SMEs, for the development and marketization of personalized, nutritious and innovative, soft fruit smart snacks that contain no added sugar, sodium or chemical preservatives, as a palatable way to increase daily fruit consumption. FRIETS smart snacks will include novel processed berries (strawberry, raspberry and blackberry) with superior quality and nutritional characteristics, as well as extended shelf-life. Pre-harvest management practices will be optimized for cultivating high-quality berries. Low impact post-harvest technologies will be developed and optimised including (1) mild and energy efficient drying techniques (e.g. osmotic dehydration, freeze drying, microwave vacuum drying or their combination) using limited or no sugar or salt, and low temperatures, (2) composite or multi-layered edible coatings, based on micro- and macro-algae components, including encapsulated or non-encapsulated natural functional ingredients. Life Cycle Analysis and socio-techno-economic analysis will be implemented for the sustainable development of new products. FRIETS implementation will be based on staff secondments, strengthening collaborative research among different countries and sectors.

The excellence hub EXCEL4MED is an initiative to strengthen Mediterranean innovation excellence in innovation ecosystems focusing on the production of nutritious food products and the valorization of food industrial side-streams. It is a cross-border collaboration between Greece, Malta and France on a common strategy on strengthening the Mediterranean food added-value chains. EXCEL4MED innovation ecosystems will be interconnected with umbrella company organizations, research institutions, governmental bodies and societal actors that will be mutually reinforcing each other in a Mediterranean context and together will raise the level of innovation excellence in their regional fabric.