What can we do to improve the availability of omega-3 products to consumers? This is one of the questions at the forefront of Matt Miller’s mind as he goes about his daily work at Crop & Food Research.
Dr Miller is a chemist and his speciality is working with long-chain polyunsaturated oils from fish and marine algae. These are the oils that are good for us and described on food packaging as containing EPA and DHA.

The investigation that Dr Miller, Dr Sue Marshall and their team is undertaking is how to take valuable omega-3 molecules out of seafood by-products using a combination of enzymes and traditional methods to deliver more efficient and high yielding processes. They are exploring ways of doing this at lower temperatures with natural enzymes to preserve the good attributes of the oil and to avoid oxidation.
Dr Miller says the team also hopes to ‘restructure’ the oil using very specific enzyme technology. “Fish oil is made of triglycerides, a glycerol molecule with three fatty acids attached. The number of omega-3 fatty acids and where they are on the triglyceride can affect how easily they can be absorbed by people when they eat them.”

He says the new investment the team has attracted from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology will be used to develop new and improved marine products for New Zealand manufacturers.
“Consumers are now well aware that omega-3 oils are fundamental for good heart and brain health,” says Dr Miller. “Being able to efficiently extract high quality oils from NZ seafood by-products benefits both consumers and oil manufacturers, as well helping to derive maximum value from every fish caught by the NZ fishing industry.”

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