During 2020, Skretting Chile, through its Fish Quality program, analyzed almost 4,000 samples on more than 80 aquaculture centers both in Los Lagos region and in Aysén and Magallanes, that includes periodic samplings within the program offered to its clients and the tests that have been initiated to validate the new analysis techniques and projects in Skretting ARC Pargua.
In addition, as a focus for this year, Skretting will support its customers through the final quality program, allowing to enhance the performance of their diets and the efficiency in feeding their fish, ensuring a reduction in costs of production.
Fish Quality provides comprehensive parameter monitoring through fast and reliable fish analysis, both in the laboratory and in the field, with the use of Color@site App.
“During 2020, we were able to consolidate projects one by one with our clients, improving the methodology we apply and the quality of our deliverable results. Today we are a reference within the industry, due to the level of detail in each of our analyzes and characterizations. We have upgraded our methodology to be able to gather more information on fish and provide better recommendations, using our complete database, which covers the three species and with information from more than 25 clients during the last 20 years. This background is what gives value to the data of our program, providing a complete characterization of the quality attributes as a complement to the productive performance,” said Marcelo Oyarzún, product manager of Fish Quality. “We have managed to establish work protocols for each of the centers that use our feeds, which allows the quality program to be 100% active today. In short, we provide a complete characterization of the quality of the fish, associated with its productive state.”
The Fish Quality program analyzes more than 30 parameters such as color, texture, fat, melanosis, biometric data and yield indexes, in addition to crossing with its origin (type of fish farming and breeding region), species and its different strains, among others.
“At Skretting we know that better nutrition is better final quality, so through Fish Quality we can provide a personalized service to each client, according to their specific needs. During 2020, we were able to strengthen the quality of the information on the new monitored attributes, such as melanosis, using international references for location, type and severity score. The texture index is also included, with the new equipment in our laboratory with which we are developing a new characterization procedure, and the fatty acid profile using updated and validated curves for the three species. Today, we have the possibility of taking customer information and crossing it with information from the industry, like no other laboratory in the region,” said Oyarzún.
Added to this is the experience on the analyzes that are projected for 2021: “Our benchmarking is increasing in demand and more complete, which allows us to complement the information of the tests and projects with each client. The portability and immediacy of the information that we will have available in the field will also be key for this year, as well as advances in melanosis and how to avoid those dark spots in fish, among other trials. In 2020, the number of samples was close to 4,000, higher than 2019, even exceeding our expectations associated with the pandemic. We were able to work with 80% of our clients, completing 100% of their centers, which in total includes around 80 cultivation centers.”
Finally, from Skretting, the advances made in environmental and production issues stand out, in addition to the characterization of the different pigmentation strategies with the development of its Color @ site application, a tool that allows visualizing the expression of color in fish in an objective way , which validated its operation in 2020 with almost 2,000 fish measurements. In addition, they assure that the deepening carried out during the last year, in the measurement of texture and firmness of the fish, has been a tremendous advance that has left their clients very satisfied and that consolidates the reputation of Fish Quality in the national market.
