Nano-sensitive biosensor instrument for water toxin screening within the aquaculture industry

随着世界人口向96亿增长，需要扩大水产养殖，以缓解日益严重的全球粮食危机。尽管如此，水产养殖的扩张目前受到监测水质方面的技术障碍的抑制。封闭的内陆养殖场需要优先监测和控制毒素，以维持健康的鱼类资源。目前，没有可用于现场使用的传感器，因此依赖于实验室分析，其前置时间长达两周。因此，不可能记录连续的数据和趋势，而这些数据和趋势通常需要了解水质，以便实时调整，避免鱼类种群的灾难性损失。一个典型的5万吨产能的陆基农场可能会损失10%的年产量，相当于损失250万条鱼，成本为1250万英镑。在英国和欧盟，每年生产超过130万吨鱼，由于水质差而损失约2.6亿条鱼；相当于每年损失13亿英镑。拟议的工具将彻底改变全世界的水产养殖业，首次提供：(1)偶发事件的实时早期预警；(2)减少样品采集和昂贵的实验室分析；(3)允许农场扩大其人均配额，创造收入/就业机会——这将是一个相当大的变化，因为这个行业的扩张受到水质管理的限制。

With the world population increasing towards 9.6 billion, aquaculture needs be expanded to alleviate the growing global food crisis. That said, aquaculture expansion is currently inhibited by technological barriers in monitoring water quality. Enclosed inland farms require priority toxins to be monitored and controlled to maintain healthy fish stocks. At present, no sensors are available for field use, as a result there is reliance on lab-based analysis which has a lead-time of up to two weeks. As a result, it is impossible to record continuous data and trends, which are often required to understand the quality of the water to allow real time adjust avoiding catastrophic loss of fish stocks. A typical 50K ton capacity land based farm could lose 10% of annual production equating to 2.5 million fish lost at cost of £12.5 million. In UK & EU over 1.3 million tons of fish are produced annually with loses of around 260 million fish due to poor water quality; equating to losses of £1.3 billion annually. The proposed instrument will revolutionise the aquaculture industry worldwide, providing for the first time: (1) real-time early warnings of episodic events; (2) reduce sample collection and costly lab analysis; and (3) allow farms to expand their per capita quotas generating revenues/jobs - this will be a considerable step change for an industry where expansion is inhibited by water quality management.