Convergence of Distributed Ledger Technologies with Digital Twins, IoT, and AI for fresh food logistics: Challenges and opportunities

The growing demand for fresher and better quality food products has led various researchers to propose solutions in this field. Besides the increase in food production, the efficiency of food logistics must be improved to reduce waste. An efficient food supply chain also reduces the final cost of products, increases producers’ incomes, mitigates the environmental impacts, and allows transportation of fresher, healthier foods. Collection and analysis of information on product tracking and stakeholder demands can improve supply chain efficiency, providing important insights to managers. Technological solutions, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital Twin (DT), and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), have been proposed for monitoring and tracking products and analyzing data collected while supporting decision-making. However, there are still few studies about the integration of these technologies, especially DTs, intelligent models, and DLTs. Thus, this work presents a review of the application of these technologies for food logistics, identifying the main requirements and summarizing how they can be applied in each logistics stage. Related surveys are discussed to find gaps in the literature and six research questions are defined and answered, aiming to argue about how the chosen technologies can be applied and combined to attempt the identified requirements. Lastly, this work discusses research opportunities in the fresh food supply chain, presenting some open challenges for adoption while integrating these technologies.