I have recently completed first year of my PhD. I finished my coursework, wrote my first year report (15000 words), identified three gaps (those are part of my report) and no journal submission or conference presentation. It is a 3 year PhD but can be extended until 3.5 year. I wrote a review article based on my literature review but my supervisor says it looks like an encyclopaedia and didn't give me any constructive feedback. Although he asked me to choose this particular topic but it is not his research area. I'm working on food traceability and he's in energy technologies.Food traceability isn't also my area(I'm an industrial engineer), but I'm reading it for last 8 months (I started my research with a bit different topic). My supervisor hardly says anything useful for my research and I don't see him that much (once or hardly twice a month). I've decided to lead PhD by my own. There is no food traceability technology expert or food science researcher around me. I'm planning to take my research towards algorithm based (But I don't know where will I find my data). I'm worried about my progress as I have no idea whether I'm doing right or wrong. In my research group people are doing different things and don't know anything about my topic. Can anybody suggest me anything? Thanks in advance.

Go to some conferences. You can talk with experts there and get real feedback. They will be interested in your work and their questions will make you consider your work in different ways. You can also see what is hot in your field and what sort of standards you need to follow. So instead of relying on your university for guidance you make your own network.

What do you mean by food traceability? Import export? From farm to supermarket, from farm to consumer home. Traceability in food processing, farming standards, slaughter house, the 'big four' supermarkets have a huge role. The import standard regulations.

Are you talking about contaimination from source, from processing plants, packaging issues, storage issues, sell/use by dates.

You should have a few places to find data, and then you can work based on consumer needs, trending, what currently works, the gaps you want to fill with your project or just offer improvements on current standard levels.

Cost of implementing your idea should also be a consideration. A solution that is cost prohibitive isn't a solution at all. Reach out and contact researchers in your area, discuss their work with them, maybe not even those in the food industry, stats people, computer science people that know already what sort of algorithms are already used to project things in the food industry, or any industry that's consumer or health care based.

You have a couple of years still, you've got time.