an
t
i
l
of vita
y
vi
lit
ta
ds
of
s
ee
tability •
se
ed
s
d
p
fi
ro
y
an
Information Letter
No. 1 / 2007
d
pr
Implementation of New Technology
for High Quality Grading of Fertilized Eggs
Aqua Gen is at the forefront of the implementation of new technology that
will have a wide range of benefits for
its customers. A new, automatic device, for the high quality grading and
counting of eyed Salmonid and Trout
eggs has been developed in a project
partnership that involved Aqua Gen,
SINTEF Fishery and Aquaculture (a
semi-governmental institution for
technology development) and the automation company Maskon. Part-funding for the project came from Innovasjon Norge and “Skattefunn”.
Grading of eyed eggs
All eggs destined for the industry have
to be graded prior to despatch. When
the egg has reached 320 degree days,
it is exposed to a mechanical impact by
a process called shocking. This involves
the pouring of the eggs from one vessel to another from a defined height.
Unfertilized and weakened eggs cannot stand this treatment, and their yolk
coagulates and turns white. Following
shocking and prior to delivery to the
market, the eggs are graded to remove
both these dead eggs and also those
live eggs which show deviations from
normal appearance and development
(unfertilized eggs, micropthalmic eggs,
etc). Until now dead eggs have been
removed by means of a traditional gra-
ding machine, based on photocells and
live eggs with deviations have had to be
removed manually by a very labour and
time consuming “egg picking” process,
that, at peak times, can also be a production bottleneck.
The newly developed device which utilises “Automatic Vision” technology will
ofi
tab
ility
replace the manual grading of poor
quality live eggs and most importantly,
because the machine can distinguish
non-viable eggs without having to make
the yolk coagulate, it will also be possible to avoid the shocking process. Even
though healthy eggs survive the shocking, it must be preferable to avoid it.
The machine sorts out the eggs in three categories depending on the quality; bad, unsure
and good eggs,at a speed of 130 000 eggs an hour. Photo: Pål Mugaas Jensen, Norsk
Fiskeoppdrett.
WINNER OF THE INNOVATION PRIZE 2007
awarded by the Nor-Fishing Foundation
Benefits
Both Aqua Gen and our clients can see
the possibility of great benefits from
using this technological innovation,
some of these are:
1. Improvements in product quality
A lower proportion of eggs with
defects will be delivered to the
market thanks to higher quality
grading. This will increase survival
in the early freshwater phase and
reduce the labour requirement for
intensive observation at hatcheries
and first feeding units. By
minimising the amount of fry with
poor health there will be a reduced
risk of the possibility of diseases.
2. Improvements in welfare
By the elimination of the physical
shocking process another
achievement will be better animal
welfare as eggs of poor quality
shall not be used in production.
Of course we are not totally sure
that shocking can damage viable
healthy eggs but the elimination of
this robust process will eliminate
any such risk.
3. Improvements in data management and reliability
The machine produces a report
that details the number and size
selection of the eggs for each delivery. The customer can now have
the opportunity to keep better control of their own production data as
well as the quality selection of the
eggs.
4. Cost-benefit
This will be achieved through the
improvement in labour efficiency
but also because exact selection of
the eggs will save good eggs from
being wasted due to erroneous
grading.
5. Work environment
The manual operations of shocking and sorting out the eggs can be
a very labour consuming process,
which is repetitive and tiring for
employees. For the dedicated breeding and egg production company,
that alone is a very good reason to
use this new technology.
The traditional grading of eggs done manually over an illuminated picking table. Each
person grades 4000-5000 eggs an hour.
The machine will grade the different quality of the eggs as shown from left: unfertilized,
micropthalmic and normal eggs.
About “Automatic Vision”
Automatic vision is a very specialized area in computer technology, optical engineering and industrial automation. Its most common purpose is the
inspection of product conformation.
Just like human beings inspect products
and parts individually, automatic vision
uses a combination of digital cameras
and computer software to process a
similar, but automatic, inspection of the
product.
cal. The inspection of biological “live products” is much more demanding to the
automatic vision system because of the
great range of variety in colour, shape
and size, the live product must also be
handled with care. Keeping in mind this
information, the task of developing such
a machine has been quite demanding
since the machine is able to process live
Salmon and Trout eggs at a very high
speed (100 000- 200 000 eggs an hour).
Automatic vision is usually used when
processing identical and mechanically
made products where product size is
precise and appearance is more identi-
Aqua Gen AS • PO Box 1240 • Havnegata 9 • N-7462 Trondheim
Phone. +47 72 45 05 00 • Fax. +47 73 54 62 91 • [email protected] • www.aquagen.no
TM