Developing a forensic test for geographic origin of seafood products

全球海鲜贸易额每年超过2500亿美元，为消费者提供高质量的食品，也是全球收入和就业的宝贵来源。野生鱼类的可持续捕捞依赖于有效的管理和监管，但监管也可能导致标签错误和欺诈。海鲜是全球交易量最大的商品之一，建立从地理来源到销售点的保管链(可追溯性)是零售商和客户的明确愿望。物种身份基因检测的发展最初在海鲜零售网络中普遍存在物种替代和标签错误，特别是在小规模零售商中。可以使用化学工具追踪陆地食品的地理来源或来源，但这种同位素技术尚未扩展到海鲜。该项目将与英国最大的海产品供应商Young‘s合作，建立基于同位素的法医测试的可行性，以检验零售网络内所有地点的地理来源声明。方法：与工业合作伙伴Young’s合作，您将初步识别具有高空间标签错误风险的贸易海鲜物种和渔业。然后，您将汇集所有可用的空间上明确的生物地球化学信息，包括测量和建模数据，以确定与所关注物种相关的渔业区之间进行同位素区分的可能性。然后，您将建立已知来源的鱼类组织样本的数据集，以确定与已确定的渔业区域相关的化学指纹，开发统计算法，根据地理来源对未知样本进行分类，并使用化学法医方法评估可用的准确性和精密度。这一博士学位的主要产品将是一套行业就绪的化学法医方法，以测试地理来源，为特定的感兴趣的渔业量身定做。最后，您将应用开发的工具来量化零售网络不同部分中空间替代和标签错误的可能程度。

The global trade in seafood is worth more than 250 billion dollars annually, providing high quality food to consumers and a valuable source of income and employment across the globe. Sustainable harvesting of wild fish depends on effective management and regulation, but regulation also opens potential for mislabeling and fraud. Seafood is among the most globally traded commodity, and establishing the chain of custody from geographic origin to point of sale (traceability) is a clear desire for retailers and customers. Development of genetic testing for species identity initially established widespread species substitution and mislabeling across the seafood retail network, particularly in small-scale retailers. The geographic origin or provenance of terrestrial food products can be tracked using chemical tools, but to such isotopic techniques have not been extended to seafood. This project, in association with Young's, the UK's largest supplier of seafood products, will establish the feasibility of isotope-based forensic tests to test claims of geographic origin at all points within the retail network.Methodology: Working with the industrial partner, Young's, you will initially identify traded seafood species and fisheries with high risk of spatial mislabeling. You will then bring together all available spatially explicit biogeochemical information including measured and modeled data, to determine the potential for isotopic discrimination between fishery areas associated with the species of concern. You will then build datasets of tissue samples from fish of known origin to characterize chemical fingerprints associated with the identified fishery areas, develop statistical algorithms to classify unknown samples according to geographic origin, and assess the accuracy and precision available using chemical forensic approaches. The main product of this PhD will be a suite of industry-ready, chemical forensic methods to test for geographic provenance, tailored to specific fisheries of interest. Finally you will apply the tools developed to quantify the possible extent of spatial substitution and mislabeling in different sectors of the retail network.