Auto-Montage Pro Helps Speed up California’s Agricultural Import Process

Auto-Montage Pro Helps Speed up California’s Agricultural Import Process
By Ensuring Quick, Easy Identification of Crop Pests

30th August 2006 Cambridge, UK: Syncroscopy, the world leader in unique digital imaging solutions for microscopy is pleased to announce that Auto-Montage Pro, its premier 3D image reconstruction software, is being used at a major US plant quarantine enforcement centre, Los Angeles County Department of Agricultural Commissioner/Weights and Measures, to produce perfectly in-focus images, ensuring rapid and accurate identification of crop pests.

Researchers in the Entomology Laboratory at the Los Angeles County Department of Agricultural Commissioner/Weights and Measures are using Auto-Montage Pro to generate focused images of important agricultural pests including snails, slugs, beetles, moths, weevils and ants entering California’s ports and airports. Many of these images are being used by quarantine inspectors to make crucial decisions on whether or not to quarantine agricultural crop and commodity shipments containing these pests.

Dr Gevork Arakelian, Senior Biologist at Los Angeles County Department of Agricultural Commissioner/Weights and Measures stated: “We have between five and six thousand potential plant pests to identify each year and to obtain good in-focus images for our pest picture database we used to take several photos of body parts of each specimen so we could have all the necessary taxonomic characters. This was not only time consuming but took up a lot of storage space on our computers.”

“We chose Auto-Montage Pro because it generates one crisp in-focus image showing all the detail we need for identification. This reduces workload of quarantine inspectors, makes field identifications easier and speeds up the process of detection and submission of samples to our laboratory for confirmation,” continued Dr Arakelian.

Jason Dempsey, Syncroscopy's Product Specialist concluded: “We are delighted to see Auto-Montage Pro contributing to such a commercially important application. Since Auto-Montage can speed up identification of crop pests this allows faster decisions to be made on quarantining perishable products, preventing food being thrown away and potentially saving the state millions of dollars.”

Gevork Arakelian, Ph.D., Senior Biologist, Los Angeles County, Department of Agricultural Commissioner/ Weights and Measures, South Gate Office, 11012 South Garfield Ave, South Gate, CA 90280, USA.

Syncroscopy develops and manufactures world-leading digital imaging solutions for extending the capabilities of optical microscopes. Syncroscopy's innovative brands include: Auto-Montage, unique software that produces infinite depth of focus images and has 3-D modelling and measurement features and SyncroScan, an automated system, which attaches to digital microscopes to allow high speed sample scanning and precise image stitching. Syncroscopy's software and systems are used by more than 2,000 organisations internationally and include many of the world's major research institutes.

Syncroscopy, founded in 1998 is a division of the Synoptics Group based in Cambridge, UK. The Group’s other divisions, Syngene and Synbiosis, specialise in digital imaging solutions for molecular biology and microbial applications respectively. Synoptics currently employs 60 people in its UK and subsidiary operation in Frederick, USA.

About the Los Angeles County Department of Agricultural Commissioner/Weights & Measures

Established in 1881, the Los Angeles County Department of Agricultural Commissioner/Weights & Measures protects the health and safety of the County's residents and improves the quality of the environment through the enforcement of Federal, State and local laws and regulations.

The Department's programs are focused in the areas of consumer and environmental protection providing leadership and direction in the successful eradication of serious pests, protecting the consumer from increased food prices, the environment from increased pesticide application and the agricultural industry from increased costs for pest control.