Location: Warmwater Aquaculture Research Unit
Project Number: 0500-00031-001-008-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2022
End Date: Jun 30, 2027
Objective:
Conduct research to protect farm-raised catfish and other aquatic food products from contamination with pathogens, toxins, chemicals, allergens, and biologics. In addition, conduct research to enhance manufacturing efficiency, meat and protein yield, food quality, storage stability and product innovations for expanding markets and increasing profitability of the aquatic food industry to address NP 306 Strategic Goal Objective 2.2 ‘Increase agricultural opportunities and support economic growth by creating new markets and supporting a competitive agricultural system’.
Approach:
The proposed research will focus on practical solutions to eliminating contaminants in farm-raised catfish and other aquatic food products; and creating new markets and products for farm-raised catfish and other aquatic products. 1) Detect, characterize and control/eliminate pathogens, toxins, allergens, chemical residues, and biologics in raw and cooked catfish and other aquatic food materials using microbiological, physico-chemical, enzymatic, instrumental, immunological and modern whole genome sequencing methods. 2) Develop innovative methods to increase meat yield, reduce processing waste, and produce new food products and functional ingredients with high food quality characteristics with increased yield and market value of products from catfish aquaculture and other aquatic food materials.
