NEWS 8 NOVEMBER 2017 NORWAY INCREASES SEAFOOD SUPPLY TO ASIA An expanded airfreight capacity in Norway will be implemented immediately in the face of rapidly growing demand from Asia for high-quality seafood exports. DHL Global Forwarding, the air and ocean freight specialist of DeutschePost DHL Group, has doubled its airfreight capacities in Norway… just five months after introducing the service in Oslo. The increase will see a dedicated Boeing 747-400 cargo plane ship seafood from Oslo to Seoul and Shanghai twice a week. “Demand for high-quality imported seafood continues to swell in Asia: South Korea’s seafood imports rose in 2016 for the third year in a row and China may soon become the world’s largest seafood importer due to rising domestic appetite,” DHL chief executive in Asia Pacific Kelvin Leung says. “Our new service links this demand to Norway’s seafood producers while maintaining freshness, timeliness and cost-effectiveness through the frequency of its flights. That will definitely benefit South Korean and Chinese seafood importers seeking new and efficient logistics options to keep up with the hunger of consumers region-wide.” Norwegian seafood imports surged more than 70% last year, and South Korea’s seafood industry will need faster and more frequent capacity between the two countries to keep up with demand. The newly deployed Boeing 747-400 service will begin an around-the-world freighter service which will re-design intercontinental supply chains while generating significant, reliable and efficient capacities for customers along the route from Brussels to Oslo, Seoul, Shanghai, Cincinnati and back to Brussels. Twice a week, DHL will transport seafood from Lakselv Airport Banak via its terminal in Oslo to Seoul. From its origin only 100km from the North Cape to its final destination in Korea, the time for the whole supply chain is cut down from 48 to 20 hours. “Norwegian seafood exporters are already experiencing peak sales for their produce, not just from Asia but also European markets at their doorstep, making high-frequency and high-speed freight capacity even more essential to keep supply chains from breaking down under the weight of demand,” Leung says. “By halving their supply chain lead times, our expanded services to Seoul give Norway’s fishery industry the logistics capacity to rapidly gain consumer share in Asia while retaining their strong presence in Europe.” URBAN AGRICULTURE An 8ha school farm established in 1932 will be transformed into a centre of primary sector excellence in the heart of Auckland for urban Kiwis. Mount Albert Grammar’s farm will be renamed the AgriFood Experience Centre, and will document the best technology, innovation, practices and research in New Zealand and globally. It will also highlight the wide range of careers, create new connections and offer students a hands-on learning approach to agrifood. It will host 20,000 visiting primary and secondary students in Auckland, and is expected to assist with the 50,000 people required to support sector growth over the next decade. SUNFLOWER SENSATION A previously unattainable version of the sunflower genome created by NRGene has the genomic assembling and analysis world buzzing and a group of international scientists ready to research the unknown. NRGene, a worldwide leader in genomic development, will hand the version to Canadian, American, French and Israeli researchers, and University of British Columba PhD professor Loren Rieseberg says the depth and breadth of the analysis significantly accelerates research. “We’ll be using the data to identify and order the genetic changes responsible for the origin of species and enhance the ability to breed hardier varieties,” he says. Tei-Hai College biotechnologist Dr Sariel Hubner – the head of plant genomics at the MIGAL Galilee Research Institute – will use the data to characterise the diversity across the sunflower germplasm and further improve other sunflower genome assemblies. “NRGene’s analysis enables us to move from one-genome-per-crop to a multiple genomes concept, allowing us to unravel true genomic diversity of key crop species.” Collaboratively, the scientists are using genomics and bioinformatics to study the genetics of adaptation and domestication, identifying the genetic changes that underlie the formation of new varieties and the genotype-phenotype-environment interaction. NRGene analysed raw data from Illumina reads to deliver an assembled genome size of 3.22 Gbp, built of scaffolds with an N50 of ~13.5 Mbp, less than 1% unfilled gaps, and BUSCO results of 91% indicating that the genome is 90% complete. “We reduced the sunflower assembly process to less than a month,” NRGene chief executive Gil Ronen says. “With the speed and accuracy, sunflower researchers can now shift their focus from genome construction to genome analysis.” The scientists and NRGene will continue their collaboration as part of the sunflower pangenome project, which will enable further research in comparing multiple varieties to breed more efficient plants for food, oil and other potential applications. NRGene is a genomic big data company developing cutting-edge software and algorithms to reveal the complexity and diversity of crop plants, animals and aquatic organisms.
FT-Nov17-eMag
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