The farmer's newspaper published two articles this week that dealt with vegetable projects that have been worked on at Matís' last term. On the one hand, a project aimed at building concise knowledge of options for packaging vegetables was discussed, and on the other hand, a project aimed at making full use of the by-products of vegetable production and the potential for product development from those raw materials.
Fyrri greinin sem bar yfirskriftina ,,Vilja leysa grænmetið undan plastfargani“ fjallar um verkefnið Challenges in packing vegetables which Ólafur Reykdal, project manager at Matís, has managed and is working in collaboration with the horticultural farmers' department in the Farmers' Association of Iceland, the Gardeners' Sales Association and the Association of Southern Municipalities with a grant from the Food Fund. It is hoped that the project will lead to progress on packaging
of various foods, although vegetables are particularly studied here and also pave the way for new types of packaging materials.
The article can be read in its entirety on page 16 of Bændablaðin and here: Bændabladlad 19 October 2023
The second article included an interview with Eva Margréti Jónudóttir, project manager at Matís, who discussed the project Valorisation of side streams from Icelandic horticulture sem Rósa Jónsdóttir, fagstjóri lífefna, stýrir. Verkefnið er unnið í samstarfi við Orkídeu og Bændasamtök Íslands með styrk frá Matvælasjóði og miðar að því að koma blómkálsblöðum, spergilkálsblöðum, rósalaufblöðum, tómatblöðum, gúrkublöðum og gulrótargrasi í betri not en nú er gert. Það gera þau með því að rannsaka næringargildi og lífvirkni en einnig þróa vöruhugmyndir úr þessum hráefnum. Verkefnið mun stuðla að sustainability grænmetisgeirans á Íslandi og aðstoða við þróun hans í tengslum við aukna verðmætasköpun, ný atvinnutækifæri og nýjungar. Meginmarkmið verkefnisins er að auka virði grænmetisframleiðslu, bæta nýtingu og auka sjálfbærni.
In the interview, Eva says, among other things: ,, what stands out after this work - and what piqued her interest the most - is how many opportunities there are for further processing of this raw material. "We have been seeing quite a lot of antioxidant activity in rose leaves, which indicates that cuttings from rose cultivation can, for example, be an exciting raw material for the production of ingredients in cosmetic products." Cauliflower and broccoli leaves are somewhat less nutritious than the flower itself and there are no drawbacks to using them.
í matvæli“.
The article can be read in its entirety on pages 32 and 33 of Bændablaðin here: Bændabladlad 19 October 2023