Maine Perspective Front Page
Cutting Edge
University of Maine Research on the Frontiers of Science
Smooth Moves Down the Line
The Bio-Resource Engineering Program has designed a prototype device that is helping to keep the production line humming at the Stinson Seafood Co., in Prospect Harbor. Using the design developed by Professor John Riley and graduate student David Cole, Alexander Welding and Machine in Greenfield built the industrial version for Stinson.
Riley and Cole developed the prototype late last winter in the department's machine shop. Their device takes sardine cans from a conveyor belt and uses an electronic sensor, a valve and a pneumatic cylinder to give them a 90-degree shove at a rate of five cans per second.
The simple device replaces a more complicated machine that was designed to do the same thing but kept jamming.
"We needed a machine to reduce the down time on the production line," says Peter Colson, manager of Stinson. "Our line is automated, and the cans have to flow smoothly to the ovens. We had purchased some new equipment which would be jammed for five minutes at a time. At the end of the day, we were losing 200 to 300 cases of production per day."
Al West, an employee at Stinson, is a UMaine graduate who knew of Riley's work and suggested that the company contact him. Riley visited the plant and developed the prototype last March.
Riley and Cole worked under the sponsorship of the Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station.
Lice on the High Seas
Just as veterinarians work side-by-side with farmers, specialists in fish diseases serve Maine's aquaculture industry by monitoring and treating parasites, viruses and other animal health problems. If left untreated, diseases such as infectious salmon anemia, vibriosis and sea lice could be the marine equivalent of a plague of locusts by wiping out schools of farmed fish and aquaculture jobs.
Mike Opitz works with farmers both on the land and at sea. As a Cooperative Extension veterinarian and a fish pathologist in the School of Marine Sciences, he tends to the health of chickens as well as salmon. His expertise has already saved money for Maine's aquaculture industry.
Sea lice is a salmon parasite that has caused severe losses on fish farms in the Canadian Maritimes. In 1996, with cooperation from salmon pen owners, government agencies and Chris Bartlett, a Sea Grant Extension colleague based in Eastport, Opitz pioneered the use of cypermethrin, a chemical that kills the lice but leaves the salmon unharmed.
"It's still the chemical of choice for treating sea lice," says Opitz, "but we are studying alternatives and other control measures to reduce the potential for any impact on the marine environment."
As a co-chair of the sea lice task force, Opitz coordinates a control program for the aquaculture industry. It includes constant monitoring, training of personnel who apply cypermethrin treatments and research on alternatives.
Opitz and his colleagues have also focused their attention on infectious salmon anemia (ISA), which has caused losses in the Maritimes but is still rare in Maine. Work by Opitz, Microtechnologies Inc. of Richmond, Maine, and researchers in the UMaine Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Molecular Biology identified the virus which causes ISA. They are now looking for treatments.
The setting for much of this work is a new fish isolation unit in Hitchner Hall. The facility consists of three recirculating water systems that can be precisely controlled for temperature, salinity and other conditions.
"When we study emerging diseases in fish, it's important that we keep these fish isolated," Opitz says. "We are already using the unit for work on ISA. It's an exotic disease in Maine."
Students who work with Opitz are taking advantage of another improved facility in which water and air temperatures can be carefully set from zero to 50 degrees Centigrade. "We call it the 'cool room.' We can control temperatures to mimic the range of conditions in the Gulf of Maine. Students use it for their experiments," Opitz explains.
Ultimately, preventive measures may be the least expensive and most effective means for aquaculture firms to avoid disease problems. To promote their use, Opitz coordinates a program of "bio-security" audits. Participating firms review all aspects of their operations to make sure that they aren't inadvertently creating conditions that promote disease.
Silage and Enzymes
Increasing the quality of silage through the use of organic enzymes without increasing effluent, a source of groundwater contamination, is the goal of ongoing research by Martin Stokes, professor of biosystems science and engineering.
Stokes has been studying enzyme silage additives since 1984. His research looks at the effects of carbohydrase silage additive enzymes on silage quality, effluent production from wet silages, and the interaction of nutrient loss and enzyme treatment.
A concern in agriculture is the liquid flowing out of wet silage in bunkers or tower silos. The effluent is not only a loss of nutrients from the silage, but is a source of groundwater pollution.
This fall with a $3,000 grant from Agri-Science Inc., of Liverpool, N.Y., two concurrent experiments are being conducted using small-scale pipe silos, each containing more than 26 pounds of compressed grass or corn silage treated with enzymes. The laboratory-size silos of PVC pipe are sealed systems topped with fermentation locks to allow carbon dioxide to escape during the fermentation process.
Throughout the 90-day experiment, silo surface and outside temperatures are measured daily, and effluent volume, pH and nutrient losses are measured every 10 days. Half of the silos are in cold storage at 3 degrees C; the other silos are heated to 40 degrees C to study temperature sensitivity of the enzymes.
The results of the two experiments will compare the effect of temperature on fermentation, acidity and fiber content. Key to the research is determining the right amount and combination of enzymes to add to silage.
Enzymes aid fermentation by breaking down fiber in silage, producing a higher quality silage and improving animals' intake. The goal is to find the correct balance of enzymes for different crops to improve fermentation, reduce fiber and decrease effluent.