NIWA Scientist wins award for enhanced kina roe
Phil James, a NIWA scientist and PhD student at Victoria University, who is researching improved techniques for farming kina, recently won an award for his work.
The current phase of the kina project is being run in conjunction with industry and is aimed at enhancing the size, colour and taste of our kaimoana delicacy, kina.
“We achieved a 30 per cent increase in roe size just by introducing wave action to the kina holding cages. This, combined with our evolving cage designs, gave us real insights into kina feeding patterns and we have achieved very clear results which is something we don't always expect on research projects”, says Phil.
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| Kina roe packaged for the Japanese export market |
The wild kina are harvested and introduced into cages where they are then exposed to variations in cage design and fed on a diet devised by the research staff. The end result of the 10-week trials has seen roe size at least double and develop a more consistent, golden colour.
Mr James stated that although increasing the size of roe was not difficult in itself, achieving a consistent colour was more difficult than you would imagine. “Kina that come to us with a streaky, dark brown or black roe have defied our efforts to give them the golden appearance that is so highly prized in export markets.”
Mr James said the research was primarily done to develop export markets, which tend to be rather fickle. Enhanced roe has been successfully released into the local market and sold very quickly. “One thing that has been lacking domestically is a robust grading system and this has led to a variable quality of kina in the market. Hopefully our research can change that and by introducing a level of consistency we can build best practice for the export market,” he said.
Cage design has played a large part in the project and this technology is being transferred to the commercial sector. “We're definitely leaning towards sea based farms rather than land based which can cost up to three million dollars to set up. Sea cages offer a better economic prospect, they are cheaper to set up and maintain and it's much easier to introduce stock into them.”
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