Italy is turning to nano-technology to defend its famous products against inferior clones.
One of the latest ideas is to use tiny biological receptors as sensors to show where a food product has come from.
The Arterra company from Naples has developed a protoype of a machine with hundreds of biochemical noses able to sniff out a foodstuff's provenance.
"The system can tell you whether a San Marzano tomato was grown on Vesuvius, for example, by identifying aromatic substances from the earth that have been absorbed into the plant," said Arterra's Gabriella Colucci.
Another product in pre-industrial tests is a system to protect Italian leatherware.
Leatherware producers in the northern city of Vicenza have teamed up with the Milan-based firm Solos to put an invisible watermark on their goods.
"Nano-particles are used as markers, inserted into the pores of the leather," said Solos's Ulisse Vivarelli.
The microscopic mark is then read by a special spectrometer supplied by Kodak.
