FreshTrack: an innovative IoT-sensor-driven food freshness estimation framework integrating blockchain

Abstract Food spoilage significantly increases global waste, particularly for perishable goods, where maintaining real-time freshness is challenging. Monitoring and tracking food freshness ensures food safety, minimizes waste, and enhances supply chain efficiency. This study introduces an Internet of Things (IoT)-sensor-driven, innovative framework called FreshTrack that estimates food freshness by tracking environmental factors, such as spoilage rates and microbial growth over time, based on temperature and humidity. In contrast to current methods that primarily estimate shelf life or detect spoilage in a binary fashion, this framework develops a model that dynamically estimates food freshness scores, yielding a numerical score ranging from 1 to 100. Additionally, perishable food items are categorized by freshness score to provide more precise, actionable insights. To strengthen sustainability outcomes, FreshTrack integrates blockchain-based smart contracts that automatically trigger alerts when freshness falls below predefined thresholds, encouraging timely use or redistribution of perishable items. The proposed concept is validated through several controlled experiments involving perishable food items equipped with sensors and IoT devices. These experiments demonstrate the model’s precision in estimating the freshness score across diverse conditions, while providing low latency and maintaining data privacy. By integrating IoT sensor monitoring with blockchain-enabled automation, FreshTrack offers a scalable, sustainable solution to enhance food safety, minimize waste, and support global sustainability objectives.