[Courtesy of the Korea Institute of Planning and Evaluation for Technology in Food, Agriculture, and Forestry]
According to the Korea Institute of Planning and Evaluation for Technology in Food, Agriculture, and Forestry, operated by South Korea's agriculture ministry, on November 2, Sungkyunkwan University's research team led by researcher Lee Jin-kee developed the diagnosis equipment through an agri-food project.
Conventional diagnosis methods for foot-and-mouth disease or avian influenza (AI) virus required researchers to collect samples from a site suspected of infection. Samples were carried to a lab to be tested. The lab diagnosis process took about three hours. Some quarantine personnel use portable test devices at the site but they were not very accurate. The newly-developed portable diagnosis equipment is about 200 percent more sensitive than lab equipment, the institute said. The technology for the portable diagnosis equipment was transferred to "PNG Biomed," a domestic biomedical technology company, for commercialization.
reporter
Kim Joo-heon
jhkim123@ajunews.com
