SUMBAWA BESAR, SR (24/11/2015)
Sumbawa University of Technology (UTS) students have made another achievement in the national level competition. Three students of the UTS Faculty of Technobiology, namely Muhammad Al-Azhar, Tegar Aprilian and Dani Wijaya, were selected as finalists for the 10 best national papers after successfully eliminating hundreds of papers from hundreds of teams in the 2015 Animal Science Paper Competition (ASPC).
The competition, which was held by the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Airlangga University, Surabaya, carries the theme “Innovation of Self-Reliance and Sustainability Strategies for Providing Protein from Livestock in Indonesia”. The output of this activity is the implementation of ideas from Indonesian students in an effort to increase national food security for the welfare of the people through the development of their natural potential.
The science project proposed by the UTS Technobiology Team was motivated by the latent danger of the spread of the endemic anthrax disease that occurred in the Sumbawa area. If not properly monitored, this disease can hinder the acceleration of the development of livestock business in Sumbawa. Anthrax is an infectious disease in ruminant livestock (zoonis) caused by infection with the bacterium Bacillus Anthracis. In Sumbawa this disease has become endemic and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of livestock, especially cows. The existence of this disease is actually an irony, considering that Sumbawa Island has long been known as the “Earth of a Million Cows”. The biggest problem faced by the farming community is the absence of a diagnostic method that can detect the presence of anthrax in livestock easily, quickly, accurately, and economically.
By raising a local problem in the Sumbawa area, the science project team from the Faculty of Technobiology, University of Technology Sumbawa (UTS) proposed an idea to create a simple rapid diagnostic test kit for the detection of B. anthracis easily, quickly, accurately and at an affordable price. With the development of this kit, it is hoped that the detection process for anthrax will be faster, so that infected livestock can be given quarantine measures earlier. The test kit that will be developed has the same principle as a pregnancy test kit.
This idea was then written in the form of a paper entitled “Development of a Rapid Diagnostic Test Kit based on Poly-?-D-Glutamic Acid for Early Detection of Anthrax Infection in Ruminant Livestock: A Case Study on Sumbawa Island”. This paper was then entered in the Animal Science Paper Competition (ASPC) organized by the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Airlangga University, Surabaya.
After passing the first selection stage, the paper submitted by the UTS Technobiology team was successfully selected as the 10 best national papers. The next stage of selection will be held at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Airlangga University, Surabaya on 27-28 November 2015 to determine the best 3 teams from all over Indonesia. (JEN/SR)
