Friday, March 29, 2024

AgResearch collects top award for meat imaging tech

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Sheep facial recognition, portable dairy processing, “green” batteries and meat quality tech were all winners at this year’s Food, Fibre and Agritech – Supernode Challenge. Richard Rennie reports.
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The Food, Fibre and Agritech challenge, sponsored by ChristchurchNZ, KiwiNet and the Canterbury Mayor’s Welfare Fund aims to capture a range of disruptive technologies that can be commercialised to help address some of agriculture’s major challenges.

This year’s supreme overall winner was the AgResearch team headed up by Cameron Craigie for Clarospec. The team developed a machine to help deliver more consistent and objective lamb meat grading quality using hyperspectral imaging technology. 

The unit that is now operating in a commercial plant providing objective, precise information on lamb meat quality.

The three main parameters the hyperspectral device can measure are meat pH, tenderness and intramuscular fat levels, all key benchmarks for determining what makes a piece of meat more appealing to consumers.

“Hyperspectral technology enables us to analyse every pixel of the image, giving not only spatial information, but structural and molecular as well,” Craigie said. 

The AgResearch team has translated that data into a formula that will provide an objective determinant of the meat’s quality, in an area that has been lacking in objective measurement until now.

Craigie expects two more units to be installed in coming months in a project that has had strong industry backing, including all major meat processors such as the Meat Industry Association and Beef +Lamb NZ.

The overall winner in the “value-added” category went to KarbenFibre founder Maryam Shojaei. Her entry was sustainable flow battery technology offering reduced cost and more environmentally-friendly power solutions, using natural fibres in the composition of infrastructure scale batteries known as flow batteries.

Dairy farmer Glen Herud who founded a dairy company based on ethical farming principles, including allowing cows to remain with their calves, was recognised with the top small business award for his Happy Cow Company “milk factory in a box” business model.

The model provides farmers with the technology, processes and compliance material to process their farm milk within the farm gate into a saleable product, either at the gate or through retail outlets.

The model builds on Herud’s experience on the family farm trying to build a business by getting more farmers to leave calves on cows. He ultimately built a mobile cowshed to milk cows in the paddock.

In its latest iteration, Herud’s award-winning concept includes a compact pasteurisation machine that can be run within the farm gate.

So far, he has two farmers who have adopted the model in New Zealand, and one in the United States.

Herud’s model has a full pasteurisation plant installed, with descriptions of the steps and protocol required at each stage, along with the software for generating compliance and regulatory paperwork.

“Now any farmer can sell pasteurised milk on the market, making $1.40 a litre instead of 60c a litre,” Herud said.

Internet technology enables those farmers to track distribution of their milk in Happy Cow dispensers in cafes and outlets, alerting them when they need topping up. On purchase of milk, the farmer will be paid immediately.

Herud’s initial crowdfunding launch saw the company raise $400,000 in only eight hours and eight minutes after returning to the drawing board, having failed to breakeven with his alternative farming model on the family farm.

Native-Australian geneticist turned Kiwi Mark Ferguson of neXtgen Agri claimed the enterprise grand prize valued at $30,000 for his Genesmith facial recognition system. 

The technology employs artificial intelligence to match breeding stock to their offspring in the paddock and is in its prototype phase, with field trials due this lambing season.

Utilising cameras located in the field, linked through to artificial intelligence neural processors, the technology “learns” which lambs belong to which dams, based on the proximity relationship between mother and offspring.

The system is presently taking about 24 hours to determine the mother-offspring relationships, assessing at four frames a second. 

Ferguson says the initial market was likely to be high-value stud operations, but interest was strong among commercial farmers, with many keen to be involved in the early field trials.

He says the technology was adaptable to other species, with flighty deer in particular of interest to developers.

ChristchurchNZ chief executive Joanna Norris says the challenge has demonstrated the opportunity for food, fibre and agritech in Christchurch.

“The sector already accounts for 20% of the regional gross domestic product – we’ve got an existing regional strength which we want to foster and grow,” Norris said.

“It’s new businesses like KarbenFibre and Clarospec who will help to do this by driving bold innovation, creating jobs and reinforcing Christchurch’s reputation as a hub for innovation.”

Craigie says the awards experience proved to be a highly rewarding one, working and engaging with a talented cohort of judges and peers.

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