Category: News

On the days 7-10 last november took place in Limoges, France, the opening meeting of the Natalie project, to which Matís is a member. The main focus of the project is to develop NSB's nature-based solutions to monitor and/or respond to the effects of climate change.

Natalie is a five-year project, which will be carried out by 42 participants from all over Europe. Iceland's role in the project is to verify new implementations of nature-based methods for assessing the effects of climate change on coastal areas and their ecosystems. The project is extensive and complex in its entire implementation, and the meeting was aimed at getting everyone to the table, introducing themselves and the parts of the project that each has at their disposal.

During the meeting, the management part of the project was thoroughly reviewed, i.e. what is expected of each of its members. There was also a presentation of all seven work parts of the project (e. work package, WP) together with the presentation of all the 42 parties involved in the project, i.e. their participation in the project and their background.

The meeting days were long but successful as planned. In addition, people managed to talk to each other and get to know each other, which is an extremely important part of such busy projects that cover as long a time as Natalie's proposed five years.

After the meeting, it is clear that there are exciting times ahead as Matís will participate in the development of the evaluation of new solutions to prevent the loss of important ecosystems. The challenges of climate change are numerous, including the threat to ecosystems that support food production, thereby threatening our food security as a nation due to local changes, but also on a global scale.

You can follow the progress of the project on its project page here: Natalie.

Also on the foreign project page of the partners here: Natalie.

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe program under grant agreement N° 101112859

Matís is currently working on a large-scale study where experiments are carried out with the freezing of salmon using magnetic and sound wave freezing in collaboration with Kælismiðjuna Frost and the seafood company Odda in Patreksfjörður.

This freezing method is a novelty in this country and it is mostly unknown in Europe but slightly known in Asia. It is estimated that the experiments will take six months, so the first results could be available in the middle of next year. The intention is to get a picture of how ultrasonically frozen salmon fillets react compared to conventional blast freezing, and not least of all the effects of such freezing on the product in the long term.

During traditional blast freezing, Sigurður J. Bergsson, Frost's technical director, says that the cell walls in the fish flesh burst and the cell liquid should thus clear its way out. When the fish fillet is thickened, the liquid leaks out and the quality of the fish decreases considerably. With the magnetic and sound wave freezing, the cell walls are prevented from bursting and the liquid from leaving the fish flesh. This keeps the freshness of the product. "The market has increased demands for fresh frozen products, and with this freezing method we believe that the seafood industry can meet them with the supply of fresh seafood with a much longer shelf life than is possible today," says Sigurður.

Magnetic and acoustic wave freezing can be described as a green technology with high energy efficiency, where sound waves are used to control and reduce the structure of crystals in fish and meat. Sigurður says this method improves the freezing process and speeds it up, it produces more uniform and smaller ice crystals, it slows down oxidation changes, which leads to significantly less damage to the food.

Sigurður says that the magnetic and sonic wave freezing has been tested on various types of products and preliminary results show that products frozen using this method taste almost as fresh.

It will be interesting to see what this research by Matís, Odda and Frost on salmon reveals. If it gives positive results and researchers become even more convinced of the feasibility of further developing this technology, Sigurður believes that the fishing companies will quickly take over. Kælismiðjan Frost and Matís have worked with the fishing industry on various solutions over the years, both for whiting and pelagic fish, so there is a lot of experience and trust. The goal is always to do even better for the fishing industry companies in the country.

A discussion from Kælismiðinn Frost about the project can be read in its entirety here: Frost introduces magnetic and acoustic wave freezing at the 2023 Marine Industry Conference

The Fisheries Conference was held in Harpa last week and there was a seminar dedicated to development in freezing technology. Sæmundur Elíasson, project manager at Matís, and Sigurjón Arason, chief engineer at Matís, gave a talk there. Sæmundur talked about recent technological developments in freezing and thawing, and Sigurjón about freezing before and after freezing. In the language institute, Sigurður Bergsson from Kælismiðinn Frost presented research on magnetic and sound wave freezing.

Matís took part in a research project this summer that was funded by the Student Innovation Fund. The research concerns the collection and use of blood from farmed salmon, and the project was carried out in collaboration with Slippinn-DNG, Samherja fish farm, Eim and the University of Akureyri.

Three students worked on the project this summer and carried out experiments with dry bleeding of salmon in slaughter, collection and analysis of salmon blood and evaluation of the effect of different bleeding methods on fillet quality. Salmon blood was collected at slaughter using equipment specially designed and built for the project. The nutritional values of the blood were studied and the quality and shelf life of the fillets were assessed using different methods, because it is important that the quality of the fish does not deteriorate during the process.

Sæmundur Elíasson, project manager at Matís, was one of the students' supervisors in the project and presented part of its results at the 51st WEFTA conference which took place in Copenhagen on the 16th-20th. last October The West European Fish Technologists Association or WEFTA is a forum where many of Europe's leading scientists in the field of seafood research and its utilization come together and compare their books. The focus of this year's conference was "sustainable use of seafood".

The results of the project provided design criteria useful for the development of technical solutions for dry bleeding of farmed salmon and also demonstrated that the dry bleeding process used did not have a negative effect on fillet quality. It is clear that the salmon blood itself can be a valuable by-product, it has multiple possibilities for utilization, is both iron and protein rich and could be a good food supplement for people. Considerable challenges lie in its collection and storage in large quantities for use, and this project is a good first step towards increased use and value creation of salmon blood.

The farmer's newspaper published two articles this week that dealt with vegetable projects that have been worked on at Matís' last term. On the one hand, a project aimed at building concise knowledge of options for packaging vegetables was discussed, and on the other hand, a project aimed at making full use of the by-products of vegetable production and the potential for product development from those raw materials.

The previous article entitled "Wanting to free vegetables from plastic waste" deals with the project Challenges in packing vegetables which Ólafur Reykdal, project manager at Matís, has managed and is working in collaboration with the horticultural farmers' department in the Farmers' Association of Iceland, the Gardeners' Sales Association and the Association of Southern Municipalities with a grant from the Food Fund. It is hoped that the project will lead to progress on packaging
of various foods, although vegetables are particularly studied here and also pave the way for new types of packaging materials.
The article can be read in its entirety on page 16 of Bændablaðin and here: Bændabladlad 19 October 2023

The second article included an interview with Eva Margréti Jónudóttir, project manager at Matís, who discussed the project Valorisation of side streams from Icelandic horticulture led by Rósa Jónsdóttir, professional director of biomaterials. The project is carried out in collaboration with Orkídeu and the Icelandic Farmers' Association with funding from the Food Fund and aims to put cauliflower leaves, broccoli leaves, rose leaves, tomato leaves, cucumber leaves and carrot grass to better use than is currently done. They do this by studying nutritional value and bioactivity, but also by developing product ideas from these ingredients. The project will contribute to the sustainability of the vegetable sector in Iceland and assist in its development in relation to increased value creation, new job opportunities and innovations. The main goal of the project is to increase the value of vegetable production, improve utilization and increase sustainability.

In the interview, Eva says, among other things: ,, what stands out after this work - and what piqued her interest the most - is how many opportunities there are for further processing of this raw material. "We have been seeing quite a lot of antioxidant activity in rose leaves, which indicates that cuttings from rose cultivation can, for example, be an exciting raw material for the production of ingredients in cosmetic products." Cauliflower and broccoli leaves are somewhat less nutritious than the flower itself and there are no drawbacks to using them.
in foodstuffs".

The article can be read in its entirety on pages 32 and 33 of Bændablaðin here: Bændabladlad 19 October 2023

Recently, an article appeared in the online magazine Horizon, the EU Research & Innovation Magazine, which discussed how people's attitudes towards various neoproteins have changed and developed in recent years.

The article included an interview with Birgi Örn Smárason, professional manager at Matís, about the NextGenProteins project that he has led for the past four years. In that project, the environmental impact, nutritional properties and consumer attitudes towards three neoproteins were investigated.

It was possible to produce three types of protein powder, from insects, spirulina from microalgae and single-cell protein from yeasts grown on forest residues. All types have good nutritional properties, so the powder can be used in both feed and food, and in addition, their production has a low environmental impact compared to most other food production.

Birgir Örn said in the interview that he truly believes that by educating consumers, big steps can be taken towards increased sustainability in people's diets and the world's food systems. In the project, various consumer surveys were conducted among a large number of people from Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Poland, Sweden and Great Britain.

It turned out that people's attitudes are mostly very positive towards spirulina and single-cell protein, but a little less towards insect protein. Although a protein powder made from mange has been developed specifically to improve attitudes towards this type of protein, only one in three could imagine tasting insects.

The article, entitled New foods can go from yucky to yummy as people's perceptions evolve, can be read in its entirety by clicking here.