Indian perspective in food traceability: A review

India is the second largest producer of fruit and vegetables in the world. Fruit production in India has increased 89% in the last decade. In the present paper It is exposed the necessity for a proper traceability in the Indian food industry, because the sector is demanding an adequate system due to the precarious nature of existing supply chain, and to reduce the numerous cases of food safety incidents and fraudulence. This work also presents the existing traceability techniques in India which include RFID, Holograms, Barcode, Nuclear techniques and other tracking media to monitor production process. Furthermore it is revealed the initiatives implementation from APEDA and its association with GS1 India in the form of Anarnet, Peanut.net, Meat.net, and Grapenet for the Indian farming products, as well as several ICTs initiatives that are actively working in many states of India. However the development of an effective food traceability system is affected by a numbers of factors like restrictive government marketing standardization, insecure policies and unstable actions for food safety, underdeveloped and unorganized infrastructure in market area and the supply chains, from the farmers to non-existent cold chain facilities and small local stores, and inadequate agricultural practices with large number of small and medium industries and famers. Therefore an effective food traceability system is not only an important tool to manage food quality and safety risks, but also to promote the development of effective supply chain management in India. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.