Newsletter 1/2021 intro: Online communication and dissemination at Aquaculture Europe 2020

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 want more information on aquaculture

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 …

Emerging raw materials, circular bioeconomy and the match between nutrition and genetics

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 …

Better fish for a changing environment

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. …

Successful genetic improvement of feed efficiency

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 …

AquaIMPACT and NewTechAqua initiate co-operation on the genetic improvement of feed efficiency in Atlantic salmon

To assess the potential to increase feed efficiency in Atlantic salmon by genomics and selective breeding, activities are merged from the two Horizon 2020 EU-projects AquaIMPACT and NewTechAqua and an internal Nofima project. This work is done in collaboration between the Atlantic salmon breeding company MOWI Genetics and the research institute Nofima. Why is feed efficiency a key trait for sustainability? Fish that are feed efficient require less feed to reach market size, and …

The AquaIMPACT Newsletter nro 4 is here – see our progress in 2020 at a glance!

One of the aims of AquaIMPACT is to increase the awareness of consumers, regulators and policy makers on sustainable aquaculture, and to communicate the societal impacts of the technologies developed in AquaIMPACT. This is needed so that consumers will have information for making decisions on their preferred food choices. Additionally, there may be a need to clarify potential misconceptions. On the other hand, for the scientific community, open-access publishing and …

We are AquaIMPACT: SYSAAF – Providing technical assistance for breeding programmes

SYSAAF is the French association of poultry, aquaculture and insect breeding companies. It groups together companies developing programs of genetic improvement and management applied to poultry, fish and oyster species and another species like insects. With the staff of 16 geneticists and biologist and 4 PhD, SYSAAF acts as a technical centre specialised in genetic improvement and advices over 42 companies developing breeding programs of more than 23 species. SYSAAF …

We are AquaIMPACT: CSIC/IATS – Sharing expertise on fish nutrition, nutrigenomics and microbiomics

CSIC (Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spanish National Research Council) is the largest public research institution in Spain and the third largest in Europe. CSIC has 10.940 employees and 123 Institutes. Its overall mission is to develop and promote research that will help to bring about scientific and technological progress. CSIC covers all fields of knowledge from basic to applied research, produces 20% of the national scientific output …