Finally, everybody wins with fast, easy and accurate element analysis

The agri-food industry today has a growing focus on resource efficiency driven by net zero ambitions and consumer demands for sustainable food production. This means that producers, farmers and the agricultural industry as a whole is challenged to find new ways to reduce carbon footprint as well as ensuring optimal animal health and performance.

Director of Front End Innovation, Thomas Nikolajsen explains that managing nutrient balances associated with both animal and plant production is essential for everything from optimizing production, to ensuring animal health, reducing GHG emission and ensuring sustainable use of land. “In managing the balances, access to the right data, at the right time and place is essential. Today this access is limited by current methods being slow, labor intensive and expensive,” he adds.

 

New possibilities for efficient resource management 

Livestock production is an area where minerals have a substantive impact. Senior Scientist, Dr. Daniel Schwarz, explains that minerals are an important nutritional component that play a significant role in the health, performance, reproduction, and immune defense of animals. “Precision feeding concepts, economic and environmental challenges are setting new demands on mineral analysis and a better understanding of the basal diet, where a bulk part of minerals come from, is required,” he explains.

However, it is not standard to determine mineral profiles of feed, in particular forage, today. Instead, ration formulations are often done using general mineral profiles. “Undersupply of minerals in an animal’s diet may lead to underperformance, whereas oversupply may end up in the environment. Neither of these scenarios support sustainable use of resources,” he continues.

Large variations of mineral content across different types of feed further emphasize the importance of determining mineral content and adjusting animal diets accordingly, Dr. Schwarz concludes.

Determining mineral content may be the key to precision mineral feeding of livestock and a better use of resources, but it requires analysis of large amounts of feed samples in a fast and cost-efficient way. Current methods are time consuming, expensive and require skilled labor and chemicals to perform, making it very demanding for labs to grow their capacity and business in element analysis. 

So, how do we rise to the challenge and secure a better flow in the laboratory? Meeting these challenges requires data driven solutions and innovation offers the logical path ahead. 


Accelerate your element analysis with Micral™

Current testing methods are known for requiring many steps, skilled operators, modern lab facilities with fume hoods, use of hazardous chemicals and expensive gases. Compared to current element analysis methods on the market, Micral™ changes the game by dramatically speeding up test capacity.

 

 

 

After the drying and grinding steps, analysis time takes less than three minutes. This results in higher throughput and faster time to result, allowing laboratories to significantly increase their sample capacity without compromising on accuracy and quality.

 

Micral is easy to use and allows anyone working in the laboratory to make a valid test without the need for special training. No chemicals and consumables are required for sample preparation or testing, making it a very accessible and scalable technology and a strong contributor to profitable growth.

 
At the same time, Micral is the first fully automated solution to measure elements in a broad variety of agricultural samples such as feed and forage. The autosampler cassette containing 60 samples is loaded directly in to the Micral analyzer for accurate and unattended analysis, with a complete running time of 60 minutes.

 

Further gains in laboratory logistics result from ready to use analytics packages, smaller footprint and digital functionalities, including barcode identification of samples and associated traceability of results. 

 

“Micral is a groundbreaking new technology enabling the agri-food industry to generate data in the field of element analysis in an easy, fast, and cost-efficient way. Data in this field is lacking today as current methods are expensive and time consuming. Micral removes these obstacles and thus opens up new possibilities to support sustainable food production,” concludes Dr. Daniel Schwarz. 

 

LIBS – laser technology in a box

LIBS is an abbreviation of Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy. It sounds great, but how does it actually work? In short, the Micral analyzer has a high-energy pulse laser that focuses laser pulses onto the sample surface, breaking down the sample from solid state, through liquid state, and finally to the plasma state. A UV spectrometer detects the signal strength released by each element in the plasma phase, delivering accurate data about the mineral concentration in the sample.

While LIBS is not a completely new technology, the Micral solution, consisting of a pelletizing unit, a searing unit and a LIBS analyzer, is the first fully automated solution to measure elements in a broad variety of agricultural samples such as feed and forage. Thomas Nikolajsen explains further, “with Micral we introduce the world’s first dedicated, chemical free, analytical solution for element analysis. Micral is the first solution to fully utilize the potential of LIBS by supplying fast, cost efficient, quality data to support sustainable agricultural production.”

 

Former Laboratory Business Unit Director, Charlotte Israelsen also has high expectations regarding the future potential of Micral. “At FOSS we care about animal welfare and the environment, which is why we are incredibly proud of our new innovative LIBS solution, Micral. During the development phase, we have been in constant dialogue with commercial laboratories, universities, professors, and farmers and everyone has confirmed that if you use the data from Micral correctly, and adjust your consumption of minerals accordingly, we will experience better livestock performance, better protection of our planet, as well as economic benefits. With Micral, everybody wins,” she concludes.