Quality systems get digital

India’s food supply chain is moving more of its quality checks onto live dashboards instead of paper files. (pib.gov.in) The Department of Food and Public Distribution said on September 18, 2024 that its Quality Management System links its own quality-control labs with the Food Corporation of India and updates lab results in real time from sample collection to result declaration. The system was launched on August 20, 2024. (pib.gov.in) The Food Corporation of India’s Quality Management System site says authorized officers collect grain samples at the source, while testing is done at Indian Grain Storage Management and Research Institute, Quality Control Cell, Central Grain Analysis Laboratory, Food Corporation of India, and third-party labs. The same portal says officers can track samples, tests, and published results through a dashboard. (fciqms.in) As of the latest site snapshot, the platform listed 2,620 depots and 8,059,523 analyzed samples, including 6,239,319 rice samples, 1,818,220 wheat samples, and 1,984 paddy samples. The site also lists testing equipment for aflatoxins, vitamins, pesticides, and iron in fortified rice. (fciqms.in) That digital layer sits inside a much larger procurement machine. The Central Food Grains Procurement Portal said the 2025-26 rabi wheat season had 3,881,498 farmers registered and 297.74 lakh metric tons procured as of its May 28, 2025 update. (cfpp.nic.in) The Food Corporation of India was created under the Food Corporations Act, 1964 to support farmers, distribute grain through the public distribution system, and maintain buffer stocks for food security. The Department of Food and Public Distribution still describes those as the corporation’s core functions. (dfpd.gov.in) A similar shift is underway in drug testing labs, where the instrument is a balance rather than a grain sampler. Sartorius said in a December 2025 white paper that the main pharmacopeias in the United States, Europe, Japan, and China have revised balance rules to make them more aligned and more specific. (sartorius.com) The paper says the revised United States Pharmacopeia chapters <41> and <1251> were published in July 2025 and became official on February 1, 2026. It also says Japan’s revised chapter 9.62 had to be implemented by December 31, 2025, while China’s 2025 guideline 9032 took effect on October 1, 2025. (sartorius.com) Sartorius says the updated rules put more weight on calibration, traceability to SI units, environmental conditions like vibration and humidity, and documented checks such as minimum weight and smallest net weight. The company pitches those steps as the basis for “audit-ready” results in pharmaceutical quality control. (sartorius.com) In both systems, the common change is simple: quality records that once sat in separate labs and files are being tied to software that shows who tested what, where, and under which standard. (fciqms.in; sartorius.com)