Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.-based Gaskiya Diagnostics – a company specializing in developing diagnostic tests for aquaculture – has received a USD 100,000 (EUR 88,500) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The new grant, according to a release from Gaskiya, will help the company develop “low-cost, user-friendly, paper-based” testing platforms for the aquaculture industry. The test in question detects the infection hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNv), which impacts farm-raised rainbow trout.
The virus, which first spread across the U.S. in the 1970s, can be almost completely lethal to fry and small fingerlings – with those that survive becoming carriers of the virus.
The grant is from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA); specifically the NIFA’s “Integrated Aquatic Animal Health Management” sector, which deals with the needs of aquaculture operations.
“We put the power of diagnosis directly into the hands of rainbow trout farmers allowing them to immediately make decisions about their crop and take action without the requirement of specialized equipment,” Gaskiya Diagnostics CEO Mary Larkin and lead for the SBIR project. “Ultimately, faster diagnosis leads to faster treatments, fewer losses, and more quality food to meet global demand.”
The U.S. trout aquaculture industry, according to Gaskiya, represents USD 229 million (EUR 202 million), but USD 30 million (EUR 26 million) is lost each year due to disease.
“This grant will accelerate development of our platform technology to facilitate the detection of a variety of aquaculture-related disease types,” Larkin said. “We’re grateful to the NIFA team for their support of our research and development work.”
Gaskiya also participated in the Hatch Blue 90-day accelerator program. Hatch is an accelerator program focusing on the aquaculture industry, which recently announced the closure of its first fund in February.
To date, the USDA’s SBIR program has awarded more than 2,000 grants since 1983.
