IWTO Congress 2024
Woolgrowers will soon have an exciting new portable tool to measure the micron of their sheep in-real time in the race instead of collecting a mid side sample to send off to a lab and waiting weeks for the results.
Woven Optics co-founders Vicky Alexandrou and Ben Pullen, who both have a background in medical research, have been working on the hand held micron testing device for the past six years.
Dr Alexandrou is hopeful the SA based invention will be a game changer for industry as micron is one of the big drivers of wool returns.
"We had no preconceived ideas about the wool industry which has been a help to us," she said.
"We have spent a lot of time working out what the industry needs and how we think we can solve that and how it can be used across a range of different environments."
Woven Optics' device is operated by the grower using the machine's inbuilt eID scanner to scan the eID tag of the sheep and then using the machine's hand held microscope to take an image of the animal's wool staple.
Within 10 seconds the machine automatically generates a measurement for micron as well as standard deviation, coefficient of variation and comfort factor.
Multiple measurements can also be taken at various locations on the animal's body, with micron known to vary from the shoulder to the belly and side.
Dr Alexandrou says the device can be used off-shears or with almost any length of wool and comes with a rechargeable battery that will run for at least eight hours before needing to be charged.
At the recent International Wool Textile Organisation Congress held in Adelaide Woven Optics presented its results of testing extensive wool top samples with the device.
It achieved more than 99 percent accuracy against the gold standard samples, easily meeting the IWTO-0 standards and had a similar accuracy to a Laserscan machine, commonly used in wool testing labs.
Dr Alexandrou says the next step is to finish validating the Woven Optics device on-farm using greasy wool.
In 2018 Heiniger Australia became an investor in the company and Dr Alexandrou says from June they will begin working with growers and other early adopters who are interested in trialling the technology.
She says a survey they conducted with more than 300 respondents has already highlighted the significant opportunities woolgrowers see from the technology.
This includes reducing flock feeding costs by making quicker decisions on which animals to keep or cull, the ability to test their whole flock with less labour costs and even having greater confidence in buying rams if a buyer uses the device on sale day.
"The greatest benefit I see is the ability to track micron fibre diameter data on individual animals over their lifetime allowing producers to better manage the genetics of flocks," she said.
Dr Alexandrou said they were rapt with the positive feedback from the IWTO conference where they were demonstrating the device.
"We had woolgrowers saying they wanted to take one home with them. There was global interest with North and South America saying they had a real need and had nothing like this to measure their wool," she said.
Written by Catherine Miller.
The original Stock Journal article can be found here.