Even the blood orange of Sicily goes on the blockchain

Even the famous Sicilian blood orange PGI will go on a ppDLT (private permissioned Distributed Ledger Technology), thus a private blockchain, in order to trace the chain and guarantee its origin. 

The project, R.O.U.G.E. “Red Orange Upgrading Green Economy”, was pursued by the consortium for the protection of the Sicilian blood orange PGI and was also sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Policies. 

The need to trace oranges arose from the fact of wanting to guarantee the product and to eliminate the risk of possible fraud and counterfeiting to the detriment of the consumer, as explained by Giovanni Selvaggi, President of the consortium for the protection of blood oranges of Sicily PGI:

“Oranges are a big part of the Made in Italy trademark: more than 50% of the total national production comes from Sicily: a million tons out of an Italian production of one million and 622 thousand tons. Counterfeiting and fraud represent a damage for the consumer and a loss for the producers. The platform was created to protect the Blood Orange of Sicily PGI and the export of this unique product in the world, which, this year, has also reached the Chinese market”.

The traceability structure was created by Almaviva and is based on ppDLT technology, which is similar to blockchain, although it does not have all the parameters that characterise blockchain technology, which is by nature decentralised.

This ppDLT is based on the IBM’s Hyperledger technology, Corda but also that of Ethereum.

This is not the first time that Made in Italy food goes on the “blockchain”: previously there have been cases of poultry and lemons from Carrefour, buffalo mozzarella from the Campania region, extra virgin olive oil branded Cairoli and much more.