The Aquaculture Company “Esturiones del Río Negro S.A.” has been developed the Sturgeon culture in Uruguay, mainly the species Acispenser baerii (Siberian sturgeon)
and Acispenser ruthenus (Sterlet sturgeon) and from 1995 it has the productive facilit y located in Baygorria´s Lake (Río Negro River) in the center of the country. The primary
objective of this animal culture is the “Oscetra caviar” production and at present the process imposes the slaughter of the female sturgeon. The farm has also a male stock
about the 50%, which are fresh marketed for catering, mostly for local catering or regional brokers. This means the sturgeon flesh availability for human consumption to
be used as seafood of added value. The primary objective of this research is the development of a process and a specific seafood to an alternative market demand, applying the fish smoking traditional technology to obtain better marketing prices, preferable to the international one. The applied methodology in this development is the warm smoke technology, upon which different process parameters were adjusted to bring the safety and commercial quality attributes to the seafood, looking after the consumers’ interest. In the present communication we inform about the preliminary
trials done at University’s Seafoods Pilot Plant (Institute of Fisheries Research, IIP). The raw material used were sturgeon filets, without skin, frozen to a final product
temperature of 0º F. The smoke source was wood’s sawdust mixing the hard and halfhard ones (Lapacho and Eucaliptus), easily to obtained in Uruguay. Automatic Japanese
smoking equipment was utilized to perform the process and some physical parameters as temperature (T) and moisture were followed and recorded for further analysis. Upon the
results of the trials we have obtained the salt concentration and exposure time, the maximum smoke equipment charge (Kgrs), the cooking drying time, the smoking time,
all in order to obtain the final quality figures. Some Lab’s analysis were performed to the developed seafood
