TSU-FTRC is a newly inaugurated 2-story, food safety compliant facility with dedicated and separate production areas for fruits and vegetable processing (250sqm), meat production (250sqm), beverage production (150sqm) and bread and pastries processing (280sqm); separate packaging areas (200sqm) and complemented with food laboratories for quality assurance of materials and products. Designed to cater small to medium industrial scale food manufacturing should be equipped with efficient industrial equipment. It is likewise manned with faculty experts comprising of food technologists, industrial engineers, microbiologist and chemists with three to seven years of food manufacturing experiences in food safety and quality assurance; product development; food analyses; production planning and supervision. This facility, the interdisciplinary team and dynamic leaders headed by a visionary University President make TSU-FTRC as an ideal/potential house of food technologies in the region.
The establishment of TSU-FTRC aims to support the agricultural sector in the region by providing a facility that could make value-added products to their produce by developing, producing, and commercializing functional foods and intermediate food products. It is likewise aiming to become a shared-service facility and a learning and technology hub of fully integrated, automated and optimized processes and systems of food production in the region to support students, researchers and the food Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), towards contributing to the national food and nutrition security and socio-economic development.
The figure below presents the R and D and Manufacturing framework envisioned for the TSU-FTRC in the next five-ten years. It aims to establish seven (7) different production modules which will include Meat & Dairy Product Line; Functional Chips and Snacks Line; Vege-based Noodle Lines; Nutri- Powder and Fiber Mix Line; Breads, pastries and native delicacies; Beverage and Liquid Filling Line and Form-Fill-SealPackaging/Repacking Line.
Fig.1 TSU-FTRC Framework showing the different production lines (modules) and interrelation (bottom arrow) of the utilization of the raw materials and intermediate products from one production line to another while maintaining their independency in manufacturing functional food products.
Likewise included is the development of food related hardware and software technology (Industry 4.0) towards full utilization of the primary agricultural resources in the province in the innovation, manufacturing and commercialization of various functional foods and intermediate food products through the interdisciplinary research, production and quality assurance team
MISSION
TSU Food Technology & Research Center was built with the mission of providing relevant well equipped resource centers in the field of Science & Technology that shall serve as learning and research hubs for students, faculty, researchers and food entrepreneurs contributing to national food security, food safety, food business sustainability and building a healthy society.
GOAL
TSU Food Technology & Research Center aims to become a Food Industry 4.0 Model for students, professionals, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders, as one of the leading learning centers of food product innovations and a technology hub of fully integrated, automated and optimized processes and systems of food production in the region by 2030.