WASP Touch and ProtoCOL3 Play Key Part in Australian Lab
Revolutionary step forward in food safety as world's first project explores alternative approaches to sanitizing produce
9 Jan 2018
A research and development lab at the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (Sydney, Australia) recently purchased a WASP Touch Spiral Plater and ProtoCOL3 colony counter. The lab is carrying out research on food safety of fresh horticultural produce and nuts. The head of the research program, Dr SP Singh, spoke to Don Whitley Scientific to explain how these two new products, provided by DWS, are key to his team’s working processes.
Dr Singh and his colleagues are exploring fresh options when it comes to food safety: “We are developing new ways of sanitizing the produce by killing potential foodborne bacterial pathogens”. The produce his lab are sanitizing is often used for export, meaning this is a vital process to ensure safety for the consumer. Dr Singh explains that “we have to deal with hundreds of samples everyday” meaning “plating and enumeration is a core lab activity”.
The project is a world’s first and to sanitize food without the use of chemicals could be a revolutionary step forward in food safety.
Speaking about his decision to invest in the DWS products, Dr Singh said “We were looking to improve lab productivity and resource use efficiency by switching to spiral plating and automatic counting”.The Whitley WASP Touch is the latest spiral plater from Don Whitley Scientific (who have been manufacturing spiral platers since their inception in the 1970s). WASP Touch provides real cost savings and process improvements, as well as eliminating the time-consuming process of serial dilution.
The ProtoCOL3 (from Synbiosis) facilitates automated colony counting and zone reading using a hi-specification digital camera and LED lighting. The system comes equipped with a touchscreen PC for analyzing samples. Another positive was the fact Don Whitley Scientific was able to provide both of these products, making the acquisition of vital equipment more straight forward: “Don Whitley Scientific offered this integrated solution of automatic plating and counting”.
To summarise, the WASP Touch and ProtoCOL3 should provide improvements to the efficiency and working methods of Dr SP Singh’s revolutionary lab.
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