Seafood CRC: Australian seafood compositional profiles portal
SCRC: CoolFish - Traceability and product sensor technologies to manage seafood cool chains APPROVAL FOR PHASE 1 ONLY FOR $14,600
There is a need to integrate both traceability and freshness technologies into a single platform, so that all pertinent information can be collected as the product moves through the supply chain from processing to wholesale/retail, and to remedy unnecessary costly project rejection. Real research developments are occurring in the integration of sensor technology (which has a microbiological focus, and includes developments in food hygiene indexes for predicting the degree of seafood spoilage on the basis of time-temperature data), and traceability technology (which has a spatial focus and includes developments in geographic information systems).
The real questions for seafood producers, processors and sellers are ones of data management – what does an operator do with the data generated by devices such as temperature loggers and global traceability devices? The linkage between this information and protocols, guidelines and standards for seafood export, food safety or authenticity is not yet fully developed or tested.
Final report
This report constitutes the completion of Phase 1 of the CoolFish Project. The overall objective of the CoolFish project is to utilise commercial traceability and product sensor technologies to address current business impediments and business opportunities in cool chains to support increased sustainability and profitability in seafood supply chains. Phase 1 provides information to support the decision-making process on progress of the CoolFish Project into Phases 2 and 3.
This project provides a baseline information about logistics issues and challenges in Tasmanian salmon cool chains. Reviews were established and commercially available traceability and sensor technologies with the most potential for deployment in Phases 2 and 3 of the CoolFish project were identified.
SCRC: PDRS - Seafood Molecular Biologist: Mapping Microbial Communities in Seafood Production and Processing Environments to Improve Targeting Intervention Strategies (Dr Shane Powell)
Microbial species negatively impact animal health, product spoilage and safety. The best approach to reduce these unwanted effects is to precisely define the species that reduce product quality, determine the sources of contamination, and then target the best intervention strategy(s) where it is required. The reason this research is needed is that the historical approach to solving these problems has been to isolate and identify bacteria using culture-based methods, based on the assumption that all bacteria that reduce product quality can be isolated on agar media. We now know that culture methods only show a small percentage of the bacteria that are present in food and other environments. Therefore we propose to use a well-tested direct-detection DNA-based method that will provide a more complete profile of microbial contamination, identify the species that cause the problem, and assist in designing strategies to produce a solution.
Final report
Until the 1990s, when it became possible to access and analyse DNA directly from the environment, the study of microbiology was limited to studying microbes that were able to be grown in artificial culture. The advent of DNA-based methods provided a way to access and study the enormous diversity of microbes that actually exist. Some fields of microbiology were quicker to take up this technology than others. Microbiological analyses carried out in industrial settings have, although this is changing, remained culture-based because they are standard methods required by regulators. They tend to be technically straight-forward and inexpensive. The goal of the Seafood Molecular Biologist position was to apply DNA-based techniques to a range of existing problems within the seafood industry. The three projects developed covered shellfish aquaculture, the processing of Atlantic Salmon and supply chains in the wild prawn fishery.
SCRC: SCRC RTG: Dr Barbara Nowak "Research exchange to the University of Edinburgh and the University of Stirling"
Final report
The purpose of this travel grant was to conduct collaborative research to:
- Investigate gene expression in early amoebic gill disease (AGD), including gene expression in different cell types to investigate AGD pathogenesis using metabonomics and assess further applications of metabonomics to fish health research
- Compare Neoparamoeba perurans strains in Scotland and Tasmania
- Develop collaborations with various UK academic staff from multiple institutions around the UK such as Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Stirling University, the University of Edinburgh, and Imperial College London.
This travel grant allowed the author to visit three salmon farms in Scotland – two Marine Harvest sites and one Scottish Salmon farm. A number of salmon were examined; however none of the farms had AGD outbreaks at the time of the visit. Collaboration was established with Marine Harvest to ensure availability of infected material from future AGD outbreaks.
The author visited Dr Jeremy Griffin at Cambridge University and Dr Jake Bundy at Imperial College London to discuss preliminary results for metabonomics from AGD infected salmon. These meetings were very fruitful, provided a lot of technical information and will most likely result in long term collaboration with Dr Jake Bundy. Preliminary results suggest that AGD infected fish can be differentiated from controls on the basis of their metabolite profile, at least in the later stages of the disease.
Future collaboration in the area of the use of immunostimulants in aquaculture was established with Dr Chris Gould and Dr Patrick Smith from Intervet Schering Plough and Prof Sandra Adams and Dr Kim Thompson from Stirling University. Dr Patrick Smith is following up similar testing of novel immunostimulants developed by University College Hospital Medical School in London. Collaboration was established with French researchers (Dr Philippe Sourd's group) investigating health of farmed Sea Bream and Sea Bass, AGD was diagnosed in some of their fish and this research was a joint presentation at EAFP conference and a publication.