Commercial seafood and aquaculture processing industries, which play an
important economic role in the United States, are currently poised to enter a
period of rapid growth and change. Consumers are demanding increasing access
to these products at a reasonable price. However, they are acutely aware of
safety concerns associated with them. The combination of these
factors and proposed HACCP based FDA inspection regulations have created a
critical need to examine current processing systems and redesign them using
newly developing sensing and automation technologies. Through these efforts,
processors will have the ability to produce the best product possible at a
reasonable cost. A series of projects are currently under way in this area. They include:
One of the first fields of plant biotechnology to reach commercialization was
micropropagation. Industrial protocols, however, are primarily an extension
of research laboratory procedures with minimal accomodations for large scale
applications and process optimization. Significant obstacles exist which
hamper further commercialization, the most important being costs. Costs must
be decreased before further industry growth can occur. Production
laboratories in possession of new technologies which significantly reduce
expenses will quickly emerge as industry leaders. Unlike plants produced
in vivo, the benefits from customization of the in vitro
environment in response to measures of plant quality have not been
investigated. Research is underway to explore techniques for optimizing the micropropagation process by monitoring explant quality under in vitro conditions and using the information obtained to streamline the culture process. The expected result is the development of new propagation techniques which improve explant quality and accelerate growth rates.