Category: News

On Tuesday 3 October, Runólfur Guðmundsson will defend his master's project, ,,Decision-making and optimization in the fisheries sector”. The defense takes place in the premises of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Iceland (VRII), Hjarðarhagi 6, room V-158 and starts at 13.45. 

The master's project is part of the project ,,Cod catch processing forecast” which has been supported by AVS and Rannís research fund. The goal of the master's project was to analyze data that has been collected recently. 5 years on fillet utilization, ring worms and loess and show how the knowledge that has been created can be used to increase the profits of fishing companies. In his project, Runólfur developed an optimization model of decision-making in a shipping company and shows how data and methodology of this kind can be used in the management of a fishing company.

Runólf's supervisors were Páll Jensson, professor at the Faculty of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Iceland, Sigurjón Arason, associate professor at the Faculty of Science and Sveinn Margeirsson, doctoral student at the University of Iceland and DTU. Examiner is Snjólfur Ólafsson, professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Iceland.

Everyone is welcome!

On 21-22 September, a meeting of the European project was held at IFL Chill-on, which is a large integrated project that started this summer. The project is funded by the EU and the grant amounts to a total of 9.8 million Euros and its total scope is about 15.1 m. Euro or about 1.4 billion Icelandic kronas.

IFL manages one of the four main research pillars of the Chill-on project as well as being involved in other aspects of its work. The meeting at IFL was part of the research group led by IFL and discusses refrigeration technology and the transport of sensitive foods such as fresh fish and how to increase the safety and quality of products with new technology.

Á website of the project states that the European Union's market area is the second largest market in the world for fresh and frozen foods and that trade in chilled and frozen foods increases by more than 10% per year. It also states that fish is in third place among the most consumed foods in Europe and due to the fragility of fresh fish, it has been decided to investigate everything related to quality and traceability in the supply chain and transport with chilled and frozen fish in the project. .

IFL's research in the project is mostly about fish products and methods to increase their shelf life and safety, but collaborative projects of this size open up various new possibilities and knowledge flows to Iceland.

The Chill-on project will also work on the development of the same elements for chicken products and the supply routes of such products to Europe. In this connection, it may be mentioned that from Brazil, for example, about 250 thousand tons of chicken breasts are exported annually to European markets. The Chill-on project includes a total of 24 participants from Europe and distant countries, such as China, South America, but participants in the meeting in Reykjavík, in addition to IFL researchers, came from Israel, Turkey, Spain, and Germany.

The project manager in Chill-on on behalf of IFL is dr. Sigurður Bogason:

Information about the project can be obtained from Matís, matis@matis.is 

Last week, a two-day meeting was held here at IFL in one part of the SEAFOODplus cluster project. This is the Seabac project, which is one of four categories that fall under the third pillar (3rd pill) of Sfplus.

Seabac's full name is Seafood: Enhanced assessment of bacterial associated contamination and its project manager is dr. Rachel Rangdale from The Center for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) in the UK.

According to Sigrún Guðmundsdóttir, who works on this project on behalf of IFL and organized the meeting here in Reykjavík, it was a regular project meeting. "We are working on developing methods to find pathogens Vibrio spp. in shellfish. We use both PCR methods and so-called "hybridization" methods, "she says. Sigrún says that work is also underway to develop a PFGE method for comparing relationships V. parahaemolyticus strains that have been found.  

The meeting was attended by participants from the UK, France, Italy, Portugal and Iceland. A participant from Spain was not able to attend the meeting.

The Fisheries Research Institute (IFL) is looking for people to take part in consumer surveys of fish. The surveys will be conducted in mid-October and will run until November next year.

There are two surveys:

1) a survey that takes place at IFL on Thursday 19 October and people, 18 years and older, are requested to come to us at Skúlagata 4 that day and taste fish,

2) a survey where people bring fish home for cooking a total of 6 times over a 6-week period (every Tuesday) from October 17 to November 21. Here we are looking for families, where at least 2 are 18 years or older.

Further information and registration of participation:

fisk@rf.is  and by phone: 530 8667

Two employees started working at IFL earlier this month, one in Reykjavík and the other in Höfn in Hornafjörður. Björn Þorgilsson will work at the Environment and Quality Department of IFL Research and Guðmundur Heiðar Gunnarsson at Höfn in Hornafjörður.

Björn Þorgilsson will mainly work on databases and risk assessment in the Environment and Quality Division of the IFL Research Division. He completed his M.Sc. degree in Toxicology from the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA in 2000. For the last four years, Björn was an employee of the Marine Research Institute and worked at the Laboratory of Stock Genetics, Keldnaholt.

Guðmundur Heiðar Gunnarsson is an employee at IFL's new office in Höfn in Hornafjörður. This is another of IFL's new offices, but earlier this year IFL's office in Sauðárkrókur was opened and IFL now operates in six locations in the country, outside Reykjavík. Guðmundur is a biochemist by education, took a BS degree in biochemistry at the University of Iceland in 1997 and will soon finish his doctoral studies at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Iceland. Guðmundur has facilities in New worlds, Little Bridge 2 in Höfn, a magnificent building that was inaugurated in 2002 and houses various activities. 

Friday 22 September Rannís stands for sk Science Week - - Dating with scientists at the Reykjavík Art Museum at Tryggvagata. IFL will be involved and will present how the senses can be used in science.

As stated Rannís website The aim of Science Week is to arouse public interest in science and increase awareness of the work of scientists and their importance.

As previously stated, the Science Week will be held on Friday 22 September and will start at 18 - 21. The science week will have a similar format as last year, when scientists from companies, research institutes and universities took part and about 700 guests came to visit.

During the Science Week, emphasis will be placed on putting the scientist himself in the foreground by making the scientists visible and accessible to the public. During the vigil, scientists will have the opportunity to present their research and results in an easy-to-understand and entertaining way, as the Science Week should appeal to the general public, both young and old.

The title of Rf's presentation will be "The senses as measuring instruments in science" and will be presented there, among other things sky food, but in sensory evaluation are the senses of man, viz. visual, olfactory, taste, hearing and touch senses used to assess food quality. A project that IFL has worked on in collaboration with other parties will also be presented Attitudes and fish consumption of young people: Improving the image of seafood.

Vísindavökun is free and admission is open to everyone and there is reason to encourage people to visit the Reykjavík Art Museum next Friday night.

IFL has secured the purchase of equipment that is hoped to open up the possibility of new research projects, both domestic and foreign. The aim is to build a new research division at IFL around the equipment, and a foreign expert has been hired to lead that work.

There are two new devices, namely the Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS) device and the Hydraulic Analyzer (HPLC) that can be used separately. The ICP-MS instrument will be used, among other things, to measure inorganic trace elements and the instrument has various advantages over older methods, such as measuring atomic absorption (AA) with a flame device and graphite furnace. The new device offers a much faster method when looking at many substances in each sample, and with this method the detection limits of the trace elements are generally much lower than with older methods.  

The hydraulic manifold (HPLC) can be connected to the front of the ICP-MS instrument and the HPLC-ICP-MS instrument assembly is installed.

According to Helgi Gunnlaugsdóttir, head of the IFL Research Division, the goal is to build a new research field within inorganic trace element analysis, which involves research and measurements of the form analysis of different chemical forms of metals in food, and HPLC-ICP-MS technology will be used in this research. The reason why the form analysis of metals is considered a special field of research is that different chemical forms of metals have different toxicity. What is driving the progress in this area of trace element analysis is related to the authorities' concern about the toxicity of certain chemical forms of metals in food and their impact on human health.

Last March, a specialist was hired, Dr Ernst Schmeisser from Austria, and he will lead the development of this new research area at IFL. Dr. Schmeisser has previously performed diagnostics of, for example, arsenic by HPLC-ICP-MS in organic samples.

Read more about the ICP-MS device here

Today, the establishment of a new limited company, Matís ohf, was announced, which will merge three government agencies, the Fisheries Research Institute, the Keldnaholt Food Research Institute (MATRA) and finally the Environment Agency's Laboratory. This is reported on the website of the Ministry of Fisheries.

Next weekend, 15 - 17 Sept. There will be a big fish feast at about 80 restaurants all over the country, and the intention is to encourage both young and old to go out to eat seafood during the festival. This is a special initiative at the Ministry of Fisheries in collaboration with the Chefs' Club in Iceland. It is safe to encourage Icelanders to join in the fun!

In Dalvík, Fiskidagurinn mikli has already established itself thoroughly and in a few years has become one of the main town festivals held in this country, where fish has been offered as guests and pedestrians have been able to enjoy. The festival Fishing is not a town festival but a national initiative, which aims to promote the consumption of fish in this country.

As stated in an interview with the Minister of Fisheries Einar K. Guðfinnsson on the occasion of the Fiskirí festival, studies show that the consumption of fish has been decreasing in Iceland in recent years, and mainly among young people. Because of this, the Ministry of Fisheries has therefore decided to organize a special initiative in mid-September under the name Fiskirí. The intention is to draw the attention of citizens of all ages to how healthy and good fish is and to make it clear to people that it can be both simple and quick to cook fish."

It should be noted in this connection that IFL has recently been working on a special project in collaboration with the Laboratory of Nutrition, the Social Sciences Institute and the Icelandic Health Service, which aims to find ways to strengthen young people's interest in fish as healthy options. The project is called Attitudes and fish consumption of young people: Improving the image of seafood.

On the website you can read more about this needed effort and the restaurants participating in the project.

The book was recently published Seafood research from fish to dish- Qality, safety and processing of wild and farmed fish, which contains a number of summaries (abstracts) from the 35th meeting of the WEFTA Association which took place in Antwerp, Belgium on 19-22. September 2005. IFL staff is somewhat involved in this big book.

It is published by the scientific publishing house Wageningen Academic Publishers in the Netherlands, which is growing rapidly or 567 pages. The book is divided into eight chapters of different lengths, which deal with issues such as the quality of farmed fish, the knowledge and expectations of consumers of marine products, the full utilization of marine catch, etc.

IFL's experts were the main or co - authors in the following presentations made at the conference: 

• Capelin oil for human consumption  
• Quality seafood 
• Evaluation of antioxidant activities in by-product hydrolysates, fractionation and concentration of active molecules using separation technologies (ultra- and nanofiltartion technologies
• Effect of catch location, season and quality defects on value of Icelandic cod (Gadus morhua) products  

IFL researchers have taken an active part in the collaboration WEFTA almost from the beginning. You can view the table of contents of the book at website Wageningen Academic Publishers and also order the book for those who are interested in acquiring it.