Category: News

The SEAFOODTURE project kick-off meeting took place on May 13, 2024 at the Institute of Food Science Research (CIAL) in Madrid, Spain. The project aims to use macroalgae biomass for the development of sustainable, high-quality food. The project is funded by the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership (SBEP).

There were 10 partners from 8 countries who attended the kick-off meeting of the project which took place on 13 May 2024 at the Institute of Food Science Research (CIAL) in Madrid, Spain.

This is a three-year project that includes 9 work packages in which the following partners participate:

• Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), Spain
• Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (USC), Spain
• Tarsus Üniversitesi (Tarsus), Turkey
• Porto-Muiños, Spain
• Sapienza Università di Roma (Sapienza), Italy
• Universidade de Aveiro (UA), Portugal
• Innovate Food Technology LTD. T/A Innovate Solutions, Ireland
• Matís, Iceland
• SINTEF Ocean, Norway
• Thang / Tartu Ülikool (Tartu), Estonia

The project's project page is accessible here.

The website of the project can be found here.

Next Friday, on May 31, Matís' seminar on the future of food production will take place. The seminar is entitled "What's for dinner?" and runs from 9:00 am to 12:30 pm in Harpa's Norðurløsasal.

There, the latest in the field of food research will be in focus, along with challenges and opportunities in food production in the future. Among the speakers will be Bente Torstensen, director of NOFIMA (food research in Norway), Dirk Carrez, director of the Biobased Industries Consortium and Ólavur Gregersen from Ocean Rainforest, the latter being a Faroese pioneer in the use of algae in food, feed and packaging. He has set up a massive algae factory and is a world leader in research and development on the utilization of seaweed. This activity has attracted a lot of attention around the world, as this industry could play a key role in replacing traditional plastic packaging with biodegradable plastic and also in contributing to increased food safety worldwide.

Matís' experts will also present their research, for example in relation to side products in vegetable farming, the development of Icelanders' fish consumption, fresh protein, food systems in cities to name a few. Then representatives from, among others, SFS, the farmers' association and the University of Iceland will sit on a panel and answer questions about the impact of food research on the food industry and society.

Bjarkey Olsen Gunnarsdóttir, Minister of Food, will open the forum and the moderator will be Bergur Ebbi. Below is the agenda of the seminar and the registration link. Those who register here will also be sent a link to the stream, but the forum will also be streamed on Visir.is.

The forum's Facebook page

Recordings, speakers' slides and photos from the seminar are available here:

What will be for dinner? Matís' seminar on the future of food production

You are all warmly welcome to Matís' summer festival on June 5 next at 16:00 - 18:00 at Vínlandsleið 12.

It will be real fun for the whole family, as Stjörnu Sævar will visit the area, face painting for the children and exciting science stations for young and old.

Here you can see the event on Facebook.

Last week, a project meeting took place in Spain in the collaborative project Accelwater, in which Matís participates. Two project managers from Matís, Sæmundur Elíasson and Hildur Inga Sveinsdóttir, attended the meeting and presented, among other things, the aspects of the project they have worked on.

The Accelwater project is about accelerating the cycle of water in the food and beverage industry across Europe, but the main goal of the project is to use value from water and reduce fresh water consumption during food processing. Numerous food producers and research partners are involved in the project, but Matís leads the work package that relates to Iceland, and here the emphasis is on land processing of whitefish and land farming of salmon. 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.

At the workshop, Hildur and Sæmundur presented the latest news about the Icelandic work package. The main news was about the installation of flow and energy sensors in whitefish processing in order to measure changes and achieve both water and energy savings in the processing. There, a master's student from Denmark is working on his final project around this work.

During the land fire, progress was reviewed in experiments with the utilization of sludge for fertilizer production. There is a system that filters the sludge and results in a mass of dry matter that can be used, among other things, in biogas or fertilizer. Experiments with dry bleeding of salmon and the possible use of salmon blood for value creation were also reviewed.

Finally, the results of the life cycle analysis, which is being worked on with the University of Iceland, were reviewed. The water use and environmental impact of the aquaculture industry and feed production are currently being analyzed there using the methodology of life cycle analysis.

In addition to this presentation, partners in the project located in Spain were visited. The meat processing company BETA was visited and the conditions were examined, but they are working to convert waste from the processing into value. MAFRICA's meat processing plant was also visited and they could see the waste treatment process developed in the Accelwater project. The waste/pig excrement is then put through a water purification process and a biogas plant, and the result is reusable water and energy, among other things in the form of biogas.

At the end of the trip, they had the opportunity to see the beautiful Montserrat mountain.

More information about the Accelwater project can be found here: Accelwater: Accelerating Water Circularity in Food and Beverage Industrial Areas around Europe

Contact

Jónas Rúnar Viðarsson

Director of Business and Development

jonas@matis.is

Now the Food Fund project Development of an image and spectroscopic predictive model to assess the quality of fishmeal as an ingredient in salmon farm feed halfway through, but the previous project year ended in the autumn of 2023. This is a joint project of the Association of Icelandic Fishmeal Producers, Síldarvällúnn, Eskja, Ísfélagin, the University of Iceland and Matís. The goal of the project is to develop a NIR (near-infrared spectroscopy) prediction model that enables fishmeal producers to obtain a fast and accurate analysis of the quality of fishmeal as an ingredient in salmon feed.

Most Icelandic fishmeal producers already use NIR to measure the chemical content of the fishmeal, and thus get good indications of its quality. However, the NIR measurements that are carried out today are of limited use when it comes to assessing the quality of the fishmeal for its main use, i.e. as an ingredient in aquaculture feed. If such measurements are to be made, growth and digestibility experiments must be carried out in aquaculture, which are both time-consuming and costly. By developing a NIR prediction model, however, it is possible to shorten the time of the analyzes from many months to a few seconds, and the cost from many millions to almost nothing.

This is not a new approach, as Norwegian feed producers developed such NIR prediction models a few years ago and have used them to assess the quality of the fishmeal they buy. However, these manufacturers have considered their predictive models to be trade secrets, giving them a competitive advantage. By developing and making similar forecasting models available to Icelandic fishmeal producers, they will have the same (or better) information about the characteristics of their production as their customers, and therefore enable them to negotiate prices with their customers on an equal footing. The predictive model will also enable fishmeal producers to evaluate/improve their own production, with information for internal quality control. The database/prediction model will be handed over to the participants (fishmeal producers) towards the end of the project, together with the fact that courses on its use will be held.

As mentioned before, the project will take two years, and that work is now halfway done. The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2024.

You can learn more about the project at Matís website, in addition to which you can contact the project manager directly jonas@matis.is.

On Wednesday, December 6, 2023, Aurélien Daussin will defend her doctoral thesis in food science at the University of Iceland's Faculty of Food and Nutrition. The thesis is entitled AirMicrome – The Fate of Airborne Microbes as the First Settlers of Terrestrial Communities. AirMicrome – The fate of depositing airborne microorganisms into pioneer terrestrial communities.

The doctoral defense takes place in Vigdís's world - VHV023 and starts at 1:30 p.m

Opponents: Dr. David Pearce, professor at Northumbria University, UK, and dr. Catherine Larose, researcher at UGA-IGE in Grenoble, France.

Supervising teacher and instructor: Viggó Þór Marteinsson, professor. In addition, researcher Pauline Vannier, Tina Santl-Temkiv, assistant professor at Aarhus University, and Charles Cockell, professor at the University of Edinburgh, sat on the doctoral committee.

Ólöf Guðný Geirsdóttir, professor and dean of the Faculty of Food and Nutrition, presides over the ceremony.

The stream is available on Teams from 13:30.

• Meeting ID: 393 367 671 646
• Passcode: adzWK5

Abstract

Microbes on the Earth's surface can be released into the atmosphere by wind and associated with events such as volcanic eruptions and dust storms. Before they reach a new surface, they are exposed to various stressful environmental factors that prevent the colonization of a large part of them. The diversity and evolution of low bacterial communities in different environments has been quite well studied. However, little is still known about microbial communities in the atmosphere, their colonization on the surface and what effect such colonization has on the microbial communities that are there. This study is the first to discuss the distribution of microorganisms in the Icelandic atmosphere and especially their colonization in a volcanic environment. Airborne microbial communities from two unique but different volcanic areas, both at sea level and at high altitude, were examined and compared. The research was carried out on the protected volcanic island of Surtsey and at the lava flow on Fimmvörðuhálsi, by analyzing the microbial communities of the atmosphere and their colonization in lava rock after one year. The atmosphere was also studied as an important source for the distribution of microbial communities in the soil and the methods by which microbes manage to withstand the harsh environmental conditions of the atmosphere. Cultivable and non-cultivable microbial detection methods were used to describe and compare the microbial communities. The diversity of uncultivated microbes was analyzed by isolating DNA from 179 samples and sequencing the 16S rRNA gene of the microbes ("amplicon" sequencing). A total of 1162 strains belonging to 40 genera and 72 species were isolated. Of these, 26 strains were probably new species. One new Flavobacterium species was fully described and the resistance of selected strains to atmospheric stressors was investigated. The origin and trajectory of the populations was determined with a special prediction model "source-tracking analysis". Results show that the microbial communities at both sampling sites consisted of Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Bacteroides, but the proportion of their numbers was controlled by the environmental factors of each area. The aerial and terrestrial communities were very different, which is reflected in the different environmental aspects of each environment. Interestingly, the bacterial communities in the lava rock at Fimmvörðuhálsi were more or less the same after one year of colonization, compared to a nine-year period, which suggests that the stability of the first settler community is achieved after one year, but that the progress of the community slows down after that. At Surtsey, over 80% of bacterial communities found in lava rock after a one-year period originated from the local environment. The communities showed tolerance to atmospheric stressors, which probably helped them to survive air dispersal and facilitated their colonization of the lava rock. In accordance with previous studies, it was also found that the most influential selection factors were freezing, thawing and cyclic permeabilization of the cells, and that Proteobacteria and Ascomycota seemed best suited to survive such atmospheric stress factors. Results indicate that stress-resistant microbes from the atmosphere are the source of microbes that are the first settlers in the nearby, newly formed environment by forming unique and diverse microbial communities in a short time or less than a year. These results provide important insights into the early stages of microbial colonization and demonstrate the importance of airborne microbial studies to advancing our understanding of Arctic volcanic ecosystems.

Abstract

Surface microorganisms can be aerosolized into the atmosphere by wind and events such as volcano eruptions and dust storms. Before depositing, they experience stressful atmospheric conditions which preclude the successful dispersal of a large fraction of cells. While bacterial diversity and succession on different low-bacterial environments are reasonably well characterized, research on airborne atmospheric communities and the significance of their deposition for community assembly remains poorly understood. This study is the first to address microbial distribution in the Icelandic atmosphere and particularly in their colonization in volcanic environments. We assessed and compared the bioaerosols communities from two dissimilar unique volcanic sites located at sea level and at high altitude, the protected volcanic island Surtsey and Fimmvörðuháls lava field, by analyzing in situ atmospheric microbial communities and communities in lava rocks after one year of exposure time . Additionally, we investigated the air as a significant source for the dissemination of the microbial communities into soil and their potential strategies to withstand atmospheric stresses. Culture-dependent and culture-independent methods were employed to describe and compare these microbiomes. The uncultivated diversity was analyzed by DNA extraction from 179 samples and 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. A total of 1162 strains were isolated and affiliated to 40 genera and 72 species, with potentially 26 new species. A new Flavobacterium species was fully described and the survival of selected strains against simulated air stress factors was investigated. The origin and dispersion of the isolates was predicted using a detailed source-tracking analysis program.

Our findings reveal that the microbial communities in both sampling sites are dominated by Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroides, but their proportions were influenced by the unique characteristics of each site. The atmospheric and lithospheric communities showed significant differences, reflecting different environmental pressures from each site. Interestingly, the bacterial communities in the lava rocks of Fimmvörðuháls were similar after one year compared to nine years of exposure, suggesting rapid microbial colonization and slow succession of the community. On Surtsey, over 80% of the bacterial communities that colonized the lava rocks after one year exposure, originated from local surroundings. These communities displayed stress-resistant properties that likely helped their survival during air dissemination from close environments and facilitated their colonization into the lava. Furthermore, in line with previous studies, we observed that the most stringent selection factors were the freeze–thaw and osmotic shock cycles and that the strains affiliated with Proteobacteria and Ascomycota were the best to survive simulated atmospheric stresses. Our results suggest that atmospheric stress-resistant microbes that deposit from local sources in newly formed environments, form unique and diverse communities in a rather short time or less than one year. These findings provide important insights into the early stages of land colonization of microbes and puts emphasis on the important role of bioaerosol research in enhancing our understanding of subarctic volcanic ecosystems.

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