From Podgorica to Novi Sad: HAMTRACE secondment starts work on blockchain traceability of dry-cured ham

Novi Sad, October 2026. Between March and September 2026, Prof. Tomo Popović, Associate Professor at the University of Donja Gorica (UDG) and local coordinator of the Horizon Europe project HAMTRACE, completed a secondment at DunavNET (DNET), the project's Serbian technology partner. Spread over several separate stays at the DNET Labs R&D facilities in Novi Sad, with a total duration of one person-month, the secondment focused on the digital side of HAMTRACE: how the origin and quality of a dry-cured ham can be recorded so that the record cannot be altered and can be checked along the whole supply chain.

Prof. Tomo Popović with the DunavNET R&D team at DNET Labs, Novi Sad, 2026.

Photo: UDG archive.

Prof. Tomo Popović of the University of Donja Gorica spent one person-month with HAMTRACE technology partner DunavNET in Novi Sad, where work began on the selection of a blockchain framework and the evaluation of smart tag technologies for the project's traceability system.

HAMTRACE (Advancing European Dry Cured Ham Value Chains with Data-Driven Authentication and Global Traceability Standards) is a four-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Staff Exchange project funded by the European Union. Ten organisations from Spain, Montenegro, Italy, France, Serbia and the United Kingdom work together to protect dry-cured hams from fraud and to help producers prove the origin and quality of their products, using chemical fingerprinting and blockchain-based traceability.

First steps towards the traceability system Work Package 3, led by UDG, develops blockchain and smart tag solutions for the chemical traceability of premium ham. During the secondment, Prof. Popović and DNET engineers started a comparative analysis of blockchain frameworks suitable for agri-food traceability and began work on a preliminary architecture for the HAMTRACE traceability ecosystem. The team also started defining how the chemical fingerprint data from Work Package 2 could be linked to blockchain records, and began a first evaluation of smart tag technologies, such as NFC chips, dynamic QR codes and tamper-evident tags, at DNET Labs.

The programme also included a visit to the Science and Technology Park Novi Sad, where Prof. Popović met representatives of the local innovation ecosystem and explored possible synergies and technology transfer opportunities relevant to HAMTRACE.

Prof. Tomo Popović at the Science and Technology Park Novi Sad.

Photo: UDG archive.

"The secondment at DNET gave us an excellent technical environment to get Work Package 3 under way. Working side by side with DNET's R&D team, we were able to take the first concrete steps towards the HAMTRACE traceability system, and we will build on them in the coming months," said Prof. Tomo Popović, local coordinator of HAMTRACE at the University of Donja Gorica.

"Hosting Prof. Popović at DNET Labs was a chance to bring our experience in IoT and smart tags to a very concrete challenge: making the story of each ham verifiable from producer to consumer. This is the start of a close collaboration with UDG, and we look forward to developing the HAMTRACE traceability system together," said Srđan Krčo, HAMTRACE local coordinator at DunavNET.

Next steps The work started during the secondment will feed into Deliverable D3.1, Blockchain ecosystem and smart tagging technology evaluation, due in month 18 of the project. UDG, DNET and UAB will continue developing the blockchain architecture, and work has started on a joint scientific paper on blockchain-based traceability and smart tagging for PDO/PGI agri-food products. The partners have also held first discussions on a possible follow-up initiative combining AI, IoT and blockchain for digital food safety monitoring, and will explore further opportunities together with the Science and Technology Park Novi Sad. Back at UDG, the outcomes will be presented at the Faculty of ICT and the FoodHub Centre of Excellence and shared with the whole consortium.

About HAMTRACE HAMTRACE is coordinated by UAB (Spain) and includes UAB, University of Donja Gorica (Montenegro), Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), ALBA Synchrotron (Spain), CETI (Montenegro), ADERA/UT2A (France), DunavNET (Serbia), Europe for Business (UK), ASICI (Spain) and Food Hub (Italy).

About DunavNET DunavNET (DNET) is a Serbian technology company with R&D facilities in Novi Sad. It develops ready-to-deploy solutions built on the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence, with a focus on agriculture and manufacturing, and takes part in international research and innovation projects in close collaboration with academia. Website: https://dunavnet.eu

Media contact: Lesley Tobin, lesley@e4business.eu; HAMTRACE Communication Team

Funded by the European Union (Grant Agreement No 101236645). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HADEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.