Month: July 2021

European Aquaculture Society (EAS) has annually organized a congress in which industry, scientists and policy makers meet face-to-face. In 2020, the congress was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and organized in April 2021 as an on-line meeting with pre-recorded videos. AquaIMPACT, FutureEUAqua, NewTechAqua and iFishIENCi projects are funded from the Horizon 2020 Innovation Action call Sustainable European Aquaculture 4.0: Nutrition and Breeding Innovations. These projects complement each other to develop more sustainable aquaculture in EU. …

Consumers are end users of aquaculture products. Ultimately also the management practices used in aquaculture will be evaluated by the consumers. All the four Aqua 4.0 projects (AquaIMPACT, FutureEUAqua, NewTechAqua and iFishIENCi) have actions to better understand the perceptions of consumers on aquaculture, and on the novel  methods the projects develop. We also propose and conduct actions to increase awareness of consumers through communication. Consumers in Finland, France and Spain …

In the last decades, aquaculture industry has progressively reduced its dependence on traditional ingredients of marine-origin, such as fishmeal and fish oil in favour of more sustainable alternatives, such as plant proteins and oils, single-cell proteins and oils, insects, and microalgae. New raw materials are incorporated into feed formulas, to take an advantage of circular bioeconomy (Checa et al.), and to replace fish meals based on wild fish catches and …

The Green Deal has high priority on increasing farm animal welfare and in reducing the use of antibiotics in food production. Selective breeding, genomic tools, novel feeds, and intelligent feeding control can all contribute to these goals. Selective breeding programmes have the potential to produce robust genotypes that can manage multiple environmental disturbances and stressors. Such factors include diseases and variable abiotic and biotic stressors e.g. induced by climate change. …

Feed efficiency is a key fish trait in sustainable aquaculture. Improving the amount of edible product produced relative to the feed provided to fish (i.e. feed efficiency) offers considerable potential to improve both profitability and environmental sustainability of aquaculture. For example, feed plays a crucial role in the economic and environmental performance of Atlantic salmon production with the cost of feed accounting for over 50% of the total production cost …