An easy/cheap/high-throughput screening method for NHase... not yet

I see there is a new paper coming out in the Journal of Microbiological Methods by Zheng and co-workers at Zhejiang University of Technology with the rather interesting title of "Ferrous and Ferric ions-based high-throughput screening strategy for nitrile hydratase and nitrilase" [doi:10.1016/j.mimet.2011.03.005]. Sadly the paper doesnt quite live up to that general title since it relates a nice way of following these activities but only on alpha amino nitriles as starting material. Finding a general way to track nitrile conversion to amide is something that doesnt have a current low tech answer (and Zheng give a good summary of the current best of breed examples out there, both those with rather specific substrate requirements and those requiring a more instrumenttal approach). In the end, I guess, you can always rack and stack your samples on a HPLC or LCMS, and let the robot churn through...