Michael Gannon, founder and managing director of Orbis Information Systems informatics in agriculture
of Agriculture, the main drivers were to eliminate the use of paper where possible, and improve the efficiency of the department. As is common within other countries, Ireland has strict guidelines where agriculture is concerned and the process has been set up where vet practitioners send samples to regional laboratories for testing. Depending on the level of testing being done, this may then be transferred to a central lab. What this means is that a robust system for chain of custody and information management must be in place. At the Irish Department of Agriculture, we
W
have a centralised LIMS with seven regional labs and their instrumentation connected to one database. Te informatics system needs to be highly integrated because the instrumentation is used for high throughput screening of biochemical and microbiology samples. Te level of testing required is high and this has been made more challenging in
hen we began our informatics project work with the veterinary sciences division of the Irish Department
the current economic climate where resources are reduced. Te work we do for the Department of
Agriculture in Ireland includes testing for veterinary practitioners as well as national surveillance programmes, such as monitoring for potential outbreaks of diseases, e.g. Avian Flu. Every animal on every farm needs to be tested, which makes the chain
TYPICALLY, LIMS IS
INTEGRATED TO AN ANIMAL HEALTH TRACKING SYSTEM
of custody complex and hence our systems are increasingly automated and integrated. Te chain of custody begins electronically at the point where the sample is first taken and vets are now able to do this on a hand-held device on the farm. Te samples are then dispatched to a lab and not only will the date, time and location of the sample’s origin have been recorded, but the lab will have access to
Colin Thurston, director of Product Strategy, Process Industries, Thermo Fisher Scientific
O
ne of the unique challenges within agriculture comes from the fact that the industry is so spread out. Many
businesses that are not necessarily related need to work together successfully and construct a coherent, traceable model from farm to fork. Being able to trace each element throughout every stage in the chain is unique and adds to the growing data requirements of the industry. At the farm level, we are starting to see an
increase in the amount of basic testing being carried out on site. We have developed many portable and hand-held instruments that are able to highlight elements such as a particular chemical property within animal feed. Of course, all the more complex testing still needs to be carried out within a lab. Tere’s a broad push across agriculture as a whole to make sure food is safer and this will only continue to put pressure on the amount of food testing being carried out, which in turn will increase the complexity of those tests and the data requirements of labs. Te picture is changing right now. Te
agriculture industry is becoming far more global which is having a considerable impact in
8 SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD
terms of legal frameworks and how importers of foodstuffs are able to cross borders. With a far greater emphasis on quality, our customers have to test for more contaminants, store larger amounts of data and issue more reports to regulators or their own customers. Typically, the process begins with raw
ingredients, such as grain, and the challenge there is ensuring that the material has been produced correctly and that it doesn’t get adulterated at some point along the supply chain. By this, I mean that it is replaced by sub-standard products or has an additive introduced that enhances the commercial value but would be detrimental to the consumer. One of the areas we look to address revolves around the safety of food products – for example, the use of pesticides in fields. One of the requirements, particularly in the European Union, is designed to limit the use of pesticides in order to prevent them from entering the food chain. Our informatics products enable scientists to detect, analyse and highlight where those pesticides might have been used, as well as offering verification of the amounts present. By interacting with
the technology in our systems, we can add traceability into the process. For example, we have some customers who grow sugar cane in South Africa and use radio-frequency identification (RFID) within their operations. Tese tags identify each of the trucks that go into the fields, load up and then bring the sugar back to the refinery, and clearly record the time and date of the delivery. Further in the process, once testing has been completed in the laboratory, the soſtware uses the tags to assign the amount of sugar that came from a particular harvest area. Within the workflow, that can then be used to calculate the amount that the farmers should be paid, based on the sugar content of each load. Tis is a different take on the traceability challenge – and one that represents an interesting mix of technology from industrial- scale production through to RFID. Interviews by Beth Harlen
www.scientific-computing.com
the animal’s entire history, ensuring complete traceability. Animal history
is a statutory requirement so that if a particular animal has been sold between farms, or sent for slaughter, there is a full record of it in case it needs to be traced back. Typically, LIMS is integrated to an animal health tracking system. Also, analytic data from LIMS provides a valuable source of data for research scientists who will then be able to detect trends in regions or even individual herds that may indicate susceptibility to certain illnesses. Informatics in agriculture is moving from
being a basic information system, to where it provides a level of data traceability that you would expect in any other industry where there’s compliance – within pharmaceuticals, for example. Establishing the safety of food is imperative for countries that want to expand their agriculture base, and LIMS are at the heart of that.
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