ReFOOD4North - Rebuilding FOODshed for a sustainable future in the North Region

In recent decades, the population's lifestyle has become increasingly sedentary, either due to a lack of time to prepare nutritious and balanced meals and to exercise, or due to a reduced economic capacity to purchase seasonal and local foods, and consequently to maintain a balanced diet. Constant climate change is also a reality, which significantly affects not only agricultural crops, but also the population's lifestyle. Thus, this project, essentially focused on the development of functional meals with native products from the North of Portugal, aims to select agricultural crops, rich in bioactive compounds, capable of providing nutrients with health benefits and at a fair cost, so that they are accessible to a greater number of people. Additionally, the project aims to develop more sustainable and long-lasting strategies for the respective agricultural ecosystems, including long- and short-term adaptation measures, to make crops more resilient to all these changes. Finally, we also aim to develop an intelligent and sustainable system that promotes the safe practice of green exercise, using climate adaptation strategies and innovative infrastructures to strengthen the population's resilience and improve public health. The basis for achieving these objectives is based on cooperation between researchers from various laboratories and research centers at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD). The team is multidisciplinary and has a strong ambition to contribute so that the key performance indicators (KPIs) resulting from this project can promote greater economic, social and environmental sustainability of the wine chain in these regions. Regarding the project's positioning in terms of "Technology Readiness Level" (TRL), considering the knowledge base obtained from other projects, which can be updated and/or supplemented with the information collected in this project, it is expected advance to a TRL9 by the end of the project, achieving a level where the reliability and performance of different technologies will be demonstrated in the operational environment of the wine chain.