University of Córdoba
Department of Animal Production, ETSIAM

Certificate in Fundamentals and Applications of Near Infrared Technology

The International Virtual Platform for Teaching and Learning Near Infrared Spectroscopy (IVPTL-NIRS) is a cooperative online educational project launched by the International Council of Near Infrared Spectroscopy (ICNIRS) and the University of Córdoba (UCO), Spain.

Over the past 40 years, a totally new approach to the analysis of materials has been developed using Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS). NIRS has been shown to be a rapid, reliable, non-destructive method of testing the quality and composition of materials in a cost effective and environmentally-friendly way. It is now possible to extend the use of NIRS analysis to a wide range of industrial quality assurance problems and indeed to apply NIRS to research and development work in the Food and Agriculture, Chemistry, Pharmacy and Medical fields, among others.

NIRS has been developed for rapid analysis and has found extensive use in industry. In contrast, NIRS technology is a multidisciplinary science which has not been, for the most part, taught in universities or in research institutes. The NIRS community have demonstrated that social, co-operative learning is possible and has benefits for all the players involved (instrument sellers, industry, academia....).

The course entitled "Fundamentals and Applications of Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS)" has been selected as the first joint initiative of the IVPTL-NIRS project.

Objectives: The course requires a workload of 6 ECTS. 1 ECTS = 25 hours of student work load; 5 of these are class contact hours. The main goal of the video-lectures, interactive self-learning exercises and tools, virtual visits to laboratories, etc. is to provide the students with a sound knowledge of the physico-chemical NIR concepts, the key statisticals and mathematical principles applied to calibration and modelling and to give an overview of NIR applications in a variety of situations ( R & D, laboratories, industry).


The University of Cordoba (UCO)

University od Córdoba (UCO) has 20 years of experience in basic and applied research related to the use of Near Infrared Spectroscopy for the quality control of agri-food products. They have experience in the scientific co-ordination of several R&D&I projects for the implementation of NIRS technology in the food and feed industries, many of them in collaboration which small, medium large food and feed industries. They have been participants in different NIRS European Projects in the 3rd, 4rd, 5th, 6th and 7th EU FP programmes. Here some examples:

“Detection of presence of species-specific processed animal proteins in animal feed (SAFEED-PAP)”. European Union. 2007- 2010. IP Dr. V. Baeten

“Assuring quality and authenticity in the food chain (FOODINTEGRITY)”. EU. 2014-2018. PI WP19 and WP21. Dr. A. Garrido Varo and Dr. Dolores Pérez Marín.

“Development of ICT fusion smart farm Technology for Intelligent Production and distribution of Orange (INTELLIGENTCITRUS)”. Eureka Project. CDTI. PI. Prof. Ana Garrido-Varo.

In the last 15 years, the research group led by Prof. Ana Garrido Varo has had an approximate external funding of 2,300,000 euros from national and regional R & D projects, 944,000 Euros for international projects, 844,000 Euros for R & D contracts with companies and 2,500 Euros in competitive infrastructure calls for scientific equipment. Prof. Garrido-Varo and Prof. Pérez Marín have a large experience in coordination and management of students and teacher’s mobility in Agriculture, acting as Vice-deans of International in the Faculty of Agriculture & Forestry Engineering.

Prof. Ana Garrido-Varo is the coordinator and academic director of the training program “International Virtual Platform for Learning and Teaching Near Infrared Spectroscopy” (IVPLT-NIRS).

UCO has also a strong involvement in the organisation of different courses to train students, scientists and quality control managers to lead high-technology research and management teams in both the academic and business worlds, in the field of NIRS and other related sensors for process quality and safety control in the food & feed processing industries. UCO R&D and training activities have been internationally recognised. The team has published more than 160 journal papers, book chapters, conference and refereed workshop papers and they are supervised more than 35 MSc and PhD theses related to NIRS, NIRS-microscopy and NIRS-imaging.

Research facilities are owned by UCO include a whole range of spectroscopy instruments (NIR, MIR, NIRM, Raman, Hyperspectral Imaging, etc.), with different optical basis, design and specifications, from laboratory instrument to more portable ones.

Furthermore, a very extent range of specific software’s, for routine, chemometric analysis and sensor building and design, as MATLAB, UNSCRAMBLER, WinISI II, NIRCAL, GRAMS, SAS, OPUS, RS3, Aspect Plus, Custom-made C-code are available.