Month: June 2020

Following Italian Government provisions, since 1 March, University of Insubria has imposed very strict measures to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. These measures are affecting our research activities, including AquaIMPACT project. Shutting the lab down came as a bit of a shock, our core RNA-sequencing research facility rejected all new samples, reagent orders were cancelled, travels  for fish sampling abroad were banned, and everyone started working from home. …

Wageningen University (WU) is a research and education institution in the domain of ‘healthy food and living conditions’ with a mission to explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life. Wageningen University & Research, Animal Breeding & Genomics (ABG) provides education and generates knowledge on the role and sustainable use of genetic variation in animals. The group combines expertise in quantitative and molecular genetics related to the …

Dorset was established in 1984, when they started to produce pig feeding systems. Dorset Identification (Dorset ID) is one of the three branches in Dorset, and it has been involved in electronic identification systems since 1989. Dorset is developing decoders and antennas for radio frequency identification (RFID) systems for various applications in industrial applications and for animal behavior studies with a team that consists of both hardware and software engineers. …

AquaIMPACT researchers are working on methods to select fish automatically, quickly and accurately. The shape and colour characteristics of farmed fish must be assessed. This allows the breeder to decide which fish will be used for further breeding. This time consuming measurement is now done by hand. The use of machine vision techniques has many advantages. With vision techniques a higher number of samples and more variables can be measured …

In aquaculture, as in other sectors of animal farming, improving the efficiency through genetics and nutrition has been very effective to improve sustainability. These two focus areas of AquaIMPACT lead to the recording of many measurements on many fish, at many timepoints and locations. Recording of something simple such as body weight is not trivial when animals are swimming and recording is frequent, let alone something more sophisticated, such as …