Matís in Neskaupstað recently started measuring Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenisby PCR method. In the past months, efforts have been made to offer new, fast methods for microbial measurements in food and feed using PCR technology as well as rotamine measurements in flour. "We are happy to report that the introduction of this technology greatly increases the service we can provide to our customers," says Stefán Eysteinsson, station manager.
With this method, it is possible to process samples faster and better, but it is only necessary to pre-cultivate Salmonella for 24 hours and Listeria for two days in a traditional bacterial medium before performing a PCR test.
"The total analysis time for Salmonella is therefore shortened from 4 days to 1 day and for Listeria from 6 days to 2 days."
This means that it is possible to detect bacteria in samples earlier and then react appropriately.
Rotamines (biogenic amines) have been used in recent years as certain indicators of the quality of flour, and the fishmeal industry in the region has called for it to be possible to carry out rotamine measurements at Matís' workplace in Neskaupstaður. With the arrival of an HPLC device at the facility, it will now be possible to measure rotamine in flour in Neskaupstaður. It is expected that the arrival of the device will shorten the waiting time for results and increase the variety of measurements in Neskaupstaður.
The adoption of these new methods at the Neskaupstað facility is a sign of the continued development of Matís in the countryside, but it is clear that these methods will be crucial for customers.
On this occasion, we at Matís in Neskaupstaðar would like to invite you to visit us on Wednesday, March 6 at 16:00, at Múlann, Bakkavegi 5.
It would be great to see as many of you as possible. Please confirm your arrival and expected number by entering your name and email address here!
Fish news recently published an article discussing an exciting project that was worked on at Matís in collaboration with chef Dóra Svavarsdóttir and it was about experiments with dry emaciation or so-called dry-age effect on fish which is considered promising.
The article talks to Dóra, who worked on the research project together with Cecile Dargentolle, project manager in the field of value chain at Matís, specializing in fish. The dry-age method of action is well known and has been applied to meat to make it softer and more tender, but in this study it was used on fish to keep it fresh longer and the texture becomes firmer.
In the project, experiments were carried out with whole fish but also with fish fillets. They specifically looked at one white fish species and one oily freshwater species and chose haddock and char. The goal was to find the right temperature and humidity to increase the shelf life of the fish in a completely controlled environment.
With this dry-age effect, it is not at all a case of dried fish, like hard fish, or that the fish will be shriveled, as there is no fermentation involved. The result is fresh fish that is cooked in the traditional way and can become an exciting ingredient for a variety of restaurants.
The project was carried out with a grant from the Food Fund, and they are now aiming to apply for a grant for a follow-up project in order to conduct further research and prepare guidelines for this method of action for different types of fish, which would then be accessible to more people.
On the 5th-6th Last February, the kick-off meeting of the BIO2REG project took place. The project aims to transform large industrial areas into a circular economy.
Jülich Forschungszentrum in Germany leads the project and there are a total of 9 participants, including Matís. Iceland's role is to hold a specialized workshop or so-called Expert Workshop in this country where we present, together with our partners from RISE in Sweden, what has gone well in Iceland when it comes to adopting a circular economy and what should be avoided.
The organization of the project, the role of each participant and what is to be done in the coming months and years were reviewed at the meeting. BIO2REG will pave the way for economic operators to actively initiate and shape the transition to environmentally friendly production based on a region-to-region approach. There are exciting times ahead and we are very much looking forward to having foreign experts visit the Expert Workshop at the beginning of September.
Matís project site: BIO2REG: Transformation of industrial areas into a circular economy
The NextGenProteins project ended at the end of 2023. It is the largest project that has ever been funded by Matís, and work on it lasted from 2019. One of the final products of the project is brochure where the main results of each part of the project are reviewed and it is now available as a pdf. form on the NextGenProteins website.
The NextGenProteins project was funded by the Horizon 2020 fund and aimed to develop, optimize and optimize the production of three sustainably produced neoproteins, and validate their use in various foods and feeds. The proteins that were examined in the project were insect proteins made from by-products of food production, a single-cell protein that is a yeast mass that thrives on sugars from forestry products, and microalgae that are grown largely on CO2 emissions from geothermal energy production.
The aim of the project was, among other things, to examine the government's regulations and policies when it comes to new protein sources, analyze production obstacles and submit strategic proposals to simplify and change the government's regulations and policies towards a more sustainable food system. NextGenProteins also aimed to produce high-quality, safe, nutritious and sustainable protein sources by utilizing industrial by-products that are traditionally wasted.
Vegetable buns with single-cell protein (torula) produced in collaboration with chef Grím.
Research and experiments were carried out to examine the possibilities of using these proteins in various food products and animal feed. Market research and consumer surveys were also carried out as well as sensory evaluation of products containing the new proteins. The sustainability of new protein sources was also examined and compared to more traditional protein sources as well as their environmental and economic impact, production efficiency and resource utilization.
All the main goals of the NextGenProteins project were achieved and such success can pave the way for innovation and new solutions to the challenges facing the current world food system. The production of the proteins examined in the project has less negative environmental impact than most traditional protein production. It is important to take that factor into account when thinking about how to meet the increased demand for protein production along with increased population growth in the world.
In the attached booklet, which is in English, the supervisors of each part of the project review the main results. In addition, Birgir Örn Smárason, professional manager at Matís and project manager of NextGenProteins, tells about his experience of the project work and its outcome.
Horticultural farms produce a huge amount of by-products that can be used in a variety of productions. Leaves can be used in spice mixes and fiber can be extracted from them to be added to foods. Antioxidant activity was measured in various by-products and it was found that rose cuttings can be used in cosmetics such as facial creams. This is stated in the recently published final report of the project Valorisation of side streams from Icelandic horticulture which Matís led and finished at the end of 2023. The project was carried out in collaboration with the Farmers' Association of Iceland and Orkídea with a grant from the Food Fund.
The aim of the project was to explore the possibility of using diverse by-products from gardening as ingredients for food, nutritional supplements or cosmetics. The side products under investigation were cucumber and tomato leaves, leaves of outdoor cauliflower and broccoli as well as leaves and stems from floriculture. It was also examined whether the use of second-class carrots and potatoes could be improved. All this was studied with a view to increasing the value of vegetable production, improving utilization and increasing sustainability.
Nutritious leaves and low heavy metal concentration
It was surprising how much various nutrients were measured in the side products. Significant amounts of fiber were measured in leaves, stems and carrot grass. The diet of Icelanders often contains too little fiber, but it would be possible to use these substances to improve it. The by-products were generally found to be rich in minerals, particularly potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium and iron. Heavy metals were not measurable or their concentrations were extremely low. These results encourage the utilization of by-products in food. When using new products for food, however, food safety must always be considered, as some plants contain unwanted natural substances to protect the plant. When plant parts have not previously been used for human consumption, it is necessary to check which rules apply to food.
Premium raw materials with the right processing methods
In the project, freeze drying was used to pre-process the raw material for various product development. For example, a special spice mix containing freeze-dried leaves of cauliflower and broccoli was created for meatballs to improve both the taste and wholesomeness of minced meat. The product concept is that the consumer only needs to mix one portion of spice mixture against 600 grams of raw mince and one egg, then it is possible to form buns and fry. This is a simple, nutritious and tasty dish with very little effort.
Deep-fried carrot strips could be a premium product to top off fancy dishes, as a snack or side dish. In the project, experiments were carried out with this processing method, and lightly salted, deep-fried beet strips turned out to be the most delicious. The taste was roasted/roasted, slightly bitter and reminiscent of coffee bean notes. The texture was crispy and the taste extremely delicious. Comparable products on the market are, for example, fried onions and potato straws (pik-nik).
Rose petals and branches with unexpected functions
Exciting opportunities lie in the use of rose petals and rose branches in skin care products, as the antioxidant activity is high in these side products of gardening that are usually thrown away. Rose leaves and branches had the highest antioxidant activity compared to leaves of cauliflower, broccoli, tomato and cucumber. It is therefore an extremely interesting future project to create skin care products with this ingredient and to better measure the effectiveness and conduct consumer tests.
Since 2005, the North Atlantic Seafood Forum (NASF) has been an annual event where managers and stakeholders in the fishing industry and aquaculture meet in Bergen to learn about the main innovations and compare books. This time, NASF will be held on March 5-7. and about 1000 people are expected to attend the event.
This March, NASF will be held for the 19th time, and then managers, investors, equipment manufacturers and other stakeholders in the fishing industry and aquaculture will flock to Bergen to attend the conference. The program this year is looking particularly exciting and has been published on the conference's website nor-seafood.com. The program is divided into 20 seminars and around 200 presentations will be held.
As often before, Icelandic companies and individuals occupy a large place in the program. In recent years, fewer people have come to NASF than they want to, as this is a unique opportunity to meet all the key managers and influencers in the fisheries and aquaculture industry in one place, and hear about the latest developments in the industry. Accommodation in Bergen is going fast during the event, so we encourage people to register early. Registration is taking place here.
Those who want to learn more about the event can contact jonas@matis.is or by phone 4225107.
The genetics group at Matís carries out, among other things, genetic analysis and research on salmon, both farmed and wild. Sæmundur Sveinsson is the head of genetics and he has looked at the life cycle of the Icelandic salmon and its genetic diversity by water area, genetic analysis of salmon from sea hog farming and genetic analysis of salmon for so-called fish farming to name a few.
Icelandic salmon stocks
It is believed that wild Atlantic salmon have been in Iceland since the end of the last Ice Age, or for about 10,000 years. The life cycle of salmon has interesting consequences on the genetics of the species, but salmon spawn in fresh water, the fry live in rivers for 2-4 years and then go to sea. Adult, sexually mature salmon then return to the same river they grew up in after a year or two at sea, to spawn. A salmon that spends one year in the sea is called a small salmon, and a salmon that spends two years in the sea is called a large salmon. This behavior of the salmon, to seek out a nursery river for spawning, is partly determined by certain genes or genes. This life cycle means that populations in rivers are quickly genetically different from each other.
The life cycle of salmon and this genetic differentiation between populations means that the origin of salmon can be traced to rivers and lakes through genotyping. Salmon in Iceland is therefore extremely diverse and there is a great deal of genetic diversity within - and between water areas.
The Institute of Marine Research worked on research on the population genetics of Icelandic salmon, in collaboration with Matís, in the years 1990-2017, which showed precisely the great genetic differences between water areas and parts of the country. It is extremely important to preserve this diversity, but overall the genetic diversity of species is declining globally. In addition to this, salmon caught in the sea, mainly as bycatch from mackerel fisheries, were traced to rivers of origin. Those analyzes revealed that most of the salmon on Iceland's coast in summer turned out to be from continental Europe and Scandinavia.
Genetic diversity is essential to the existence of species and enables them to adapt to changes in the environment. These changes can be diverse, from changes in temperature or other environmental factors to new diseases. Global climate change will undoubtedly exaggerate fluctuations in the weather here in the Arctic, and therefore it has never been more important to preserve biological and genetic diversity in Iceland's biosphere.
Salmon fishing in an Icelandic river.
Brush salmon
For years, Matís has carried out genotyping analyzes of salmon. Streak salmon are fish that have escaped from sea pen farming and are then caught in rivers or the sea. Aquaculture inevitably involves the risk of farmed salmon escaping from the pens, but it is safe to say that no one wants this to happen and farm companies take various measures to prevent hatchery. In Iceland, a very efficient and good system is in place to keep track of the origin of salmon caught in rivers. It is a legal obligation to return all salmon that are caught to the Norwegian Fisheries Agency and/or the Norwegian Fisheries Agency. Matís receives a sample of the salmon for genotyping, which Hafró then uses to trace the origin of the fish, i.e. from which sea pen he escaped.
This system is based on the fact that Matís also genotypes all the broodstock used to produce fry in sea bream farming in this country. This data is used to perform paternity analyses, but all fish in a given pen have the same father, so their origin can be traced.
Sea urchins in Iceland
In August 2023, the Norwegian Food Agency, MAST, announced a large spill from a pen in Patreksfjörður. What was particularly serious about that streak was that most of the salmon caught turned out to be mature. That means the risk of serious genetic mixing is considerable. Matís received over 500 samples for analysis this fall.
Fish farming
In the fall of 2023, Matís began offering genotyping analyzes of salmon for fish farming. Fish farming refers to the raising of juveniles and juveniles and spawning from wild fish from the river in which the effort is being made to increase the number of fish and fishing. Matís' staff works very closely with the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research's experts in the organization's freshwater sector.
The Norwegian Fisheries Agency and Hafró agree that it would be very bad for salmon populations if farmed fish entered a hatchery and were used for fry or roe production. Salmon that have escaped early from a fire, i.e. when they were small, have very few visible signs of fire, and therefore it is not always possible to rely on the diagnosis of farmed salmon based on appearance. Genotyping is a powerful tool for identifying potential farmed salmon that could be included in fish farming. In autumn 2023, Matís carried out these analyzes for five fishing companies to ensure that only wild salmon would be used in fish farming.
A podcast about genetic analysis of salmon in Iceland
Sæmundur Sveinsson was an interviewer in Matvælinu, Matís' broadcast on research and innovation in food production these days. In the episode, he talks about genetic analyzes of salmon in Iceland over the years and especially the research that his professional group is currently working on. Sæmundi's song deals with these issues in an easy-to-understand and entertaining way, so it's safe to recommend listening!
The episode is available in its entirety on all major podcasts and in the player below:
The husband and wife Þórunn Ólafsdóttir and Haraldur Guðjónsson started producing garlic in full force in the summer of 2023, but garlic cultivation begins with sowing seeds in autumn and harvesting in late summer the following year. Last summer was spent almost exclusively on growing seeds, so the first whole garlics are expected in stores in the fall of 2024. However, a by-product of the seed cultivation is the cloves of garlic, which are too small for seeds, and that's where this story begins.
The couple turned to Matís for their sake The food factory which operates at Matís in Reykjavík and believed that operations in a fully equipped food factory that is already in operation would be sufficient to start food production, packaging, sales and distribution. However, something else happened during the day. Cultivation and sale of whole garlic does not require special permits since it is primary production. If the onion is further processed, such as separating the ribs in the onion, peeling, cleaning or further processing, then it is considered food processing.
Food processing, by whatever name it is called, requires a license. You need to apply for a work permit from those who grant it. The local health authority or the Swedish Food Agency, depending on the nature of the activity. In this case, it was the Reykjavík Health Authority that had to grant the permit.
Since some time had passed since the garlic was taken up, it was starting to lose quality, and therefore needed a quick hand in obtaining a work permit.
The first step is to make a quality manual. A quality manual must state what is to be produced, from which raw materials, who produces, where and how the production takes place. Information on nutritional content and possible intolerances is also needed. It must be demonstrated that the person understands the rules that food manufacturers obey, the shelf life of the product must be explained, which packaging will be used and confirmation that it is intended for food must be obtained. Then you need to know the difference between personal hygiene and general handling of food, for example possible cross-contamination and how to prevent it, but this is done through risk analysis.
As soon as there was a request for Matís to provide advice on the preparation of a quality manual, we started. A day later, a usable quality manual was ready that could be presented to the health inspectorate, and it was also then possible to request a work permit. The license was obtained two days later, and then the production of garlic salt began, but it is the first product that came to the market from Dalahvítlauk, produced in Matís's Matirsmiðja at Vínlandsleið 12.
You can follow fun posts about the crops and products on Dalahvítlauk's Facebook page here: Valley garlic.
Iceland has long been at the forefront of the utilization of so-called secondary raw materials, and one of the raw materials that is interesting to evaluate both with an opportunity for value creation and environmental issues in mind is water from, for example, fish processing plants and land farms. The Accelwater project that Matís is currently working on is about finding solutions to make use of value from process water and the best use of water in the fishing industry and cooking.
Hildur Inga Sveinsdóttir manages the part of the work that Matís does in the project, but it is done in collaboration with 17 parties from five European countries with funding from the European Union through Horizon 2020. "We decided to participate in the project in collaboration with strong industrial partners in Iceland and aimed to use the work in order to assess the opportunities that exist in this field in this country". The project is led by the Greek technology company Agenso and involves many participants, both from industry and the research environment. In addition to Matís, the Icelandic participants in the project are the University of Iceland's Faculty of Food and Nutrition, Útgerðarfélag Akureyri and Samherji Fiskeldi.
But what are side ingredients?
It's really a question of word usage, but it's often talked about side currents or side ingredients. This refers to raw materials that you can get out of processing that are not the main product you are looking for. Fishing and processing is a good example, where fishing is done in order to obtain fish fillets for consumption, while side streams are other raw materials that may have previously been defined as waste or garbage. These can be for example heads, skins, guts or whatever, but when you handle these things right there are opportunities to get a lot of value out of them.
We try to use the word side ingredient because that way we indicate that this is an ingredient that we can use for something, not just "extra junk" that we need to get rid of. We emphasize to stop talking about this as waste or rubbish because it often evokes negative mental associations that give a wrong image of the raw material. For example, in recent years, a variety of valuable products have been developed from fish roe, which in the past would have been thought to be impossible.
Fresh water use in food processing and better utilization
The main goal of the project is to use value from water and reduce fresh water consumption during food processing. Foreign partners are working on experiments within the value chain in tomato growing, meat processing, the dairy industry and in brewing. In Hérland, emphasis is placed on land cultivation of whitefish and land farming of salmon. Emphasis has been placed on assessing the situation by analyzing the environmental impact and use, then which resources are used in these different processes, and then what possible opportunities exist for saving water and energy resources on the one hand, and on the other hand what possibilities there are for value creation from the main water streams.
The project is still ongoing and there is more than a year left of the planned work. The results that have been collected so far show that Icelanders generally use a lot of water during processing and there are opportunities to reduce that use, but the methods that are planned to be evaluated in the project are being developed and it will be exciting to see what they deliver. In addition, there are great opportunities in relation to the utilization of side streams from land farming, especially aquaculture sludge or aquaculture manure, which contains a large amount of valuable nutrients that can potentially be used to make fertilizers, for example. Experiments and analyzes of the opportunities that lie in that raw material are currently underway, along with an assessment of their safety.
Stefán Þór Eysteinsson in biomass plant Matís in Neskaupstaður
Water is a valuable resource
The discussion that has been created about the project keeps alive the important fact that we must not take it for granted that here in Iceland there is good access to the resource that is clean fresh water and we make sure to always use it as sparingly as possible. The project has also entered into an important discussion related to the development of rural agriculture in this country.
results The results of the project will be published in open scientific publications and presented to relevant stakeholders as appropriate so that they will be useful to other parties in the industry in Iceland and abroad. Results will also be useful for policy making and setting up and reviewing processes in fish processing and land farming, the latter of which is the fastest growing industry in Iceland today.
