Future growth in sustainable, resilient and climate friendly organic and conventional European aquaculture

Project Information

FutureEUAqua

Grant agreement ID: 817737

DOI

10.3030/817737

Project closed

EC signature date 10 October 2018

Start date 1 November 2018

End date 30 April 2023

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy

Total cost

€ 7 088 073,25

EU contribution

€ 6 000 000,00

Coordinated by

NOFIMA AS
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - FutureEUAqua (Future growth in sustainable, resilient and climate friendly organic and conventional European aquaculture)

Reporting period: 2022-03-01 to 2023-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

FutureEUAqua objective is to effectively promote sustainable growth of resilient, environmentally friendly organic and conventional aquaculture to meet future challenges with respect to climate changes, growing consumer demand for high quality, nutritious and responsibly produced food. We expect that future aquaculture will change due to increased need for more food to a growing population and to meet the climate changes. For sustainable production, we need to understand how the climate changes may affect the fish welfare and performance. We also need to develop feed ingredients of high quality that better utilise natural resources, and farm fish in sustainable ways, e.g. as organic, and in integrated multitrophic aquaculture systems (IMTA) and recirculation systems (RAS). We need to make sure that consumers accept and are well acquainted with the fish products and trust their health effects and that they are sustainable. Increased food production needs more production area that may cause competition with other interests, however actions to avoid conflict of interests for space and markets is important. Sustainable food production also needs sustainable processing and packaging methods, preferably in line with the organic regulations. FutureEUAqua has shown that current genetic strains of the most common aquaculture species most likely are resilient to future changes in temperature and changes in feed to more sustainable feed ingredients, however with some species differences. We conclude that there is still need for communication campaigns to increase the knowledge about aquaculture. Finally, the industry is increasingly using digital tools for better monitoring of health and welfare, and environmentally friendly processing and packaging methods

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

FutureEUAqua results shows that for salmon, seabass and seabream different genetic families perform equally well when fish were fed with conventional diet or with a diet with novel feed ingredients and reared in different temperatures. This support that current selection strategies for the tested species comply with future climate change and need for novel feed ingredients. Low trophic feed ingredients for feed for conventional and organic salmon, trout, seabass and seabream have been incorporated into feed that has been tested for all mentioned species in tank- and cage experiments. Results show that fish performance and welfare are satisfying when fed with novel and organic ingredients. Consumer awareness and perception of product labelling and aquaculture have been surveyed. Results show that the public awareness is generally low, but organic and conventional aquaculture have higher awareness than different niche production. A communication strategy based on results from the performed surveys, and regulatory framework challenges have been made. We tested the communication strategy twice during the project. Based on the lack of progress with respect of consumer knowledge and perception, there is a still need for targeted communication strategies. Regulations for aquaculture in Germany, France, Greece, and Norway have in common that available areas for aquaculture are bottlenecks for future growth and that the prospected growth in aquaculture, may have been too optimistic. In FutureEUAqua we have worked with different production systems, such as integrated multitrophic aquaculture systems (IMTA), recirculation aquaculture systems (RAS), in addition to conventional open sea cage systems. An IMTA review found that there is evidence that there are benefits of IMTA at the basin-scale, however, there are regulatory challenges that prevent large scale use of IMTA. In RAS an experiment to investigate effects of different salinity increase on biofilter performance showed that ammonia accumulation is a risk factor, but severe concentrations can be avoided by spending more time on increasing salinity. Continuous measurement of turbidity in the water may be a useful approximation of microbial activity in the water. Testing novel feed ingredients in RAS showed that fermenting rapeseed meal is not beneficial for RAS water quality. Wireless fish- and water quality sensors were calibrated, and then used for large scale experiment where wireless acoustic tags implanted in fish, water quality sensors and biomass sensors were used in commercial cage farming to monitor water quality and fish performance in real time. Innovations coming from the FutureEUAqua project were assessed in economy – and life cycle assessment (LCA) models and compared to current value chain. FutureEUAqua used different fish species from project experiments and commercial fish to test innovative processing methods that use less energy and are more environmentally friendly. An innovative method for rapid evaluation of fish texture has been developed. Finally, the application of innovative and environmentally friendly packaging material (vacuum packaging vs skin packaging) has been evaluated, with successful results and good fish quality using skin packaging. FutureEUAqua results have been frequently disseminated through open access peer-review publications, other media coverages and both internal and external presentations. The project provided seven webinars to the stakeholder platform where project results were presented. We have completed the exploitation plan and 21 Key exploitable results. Five online training sessions and one physical training were completed. An e-learning course covering the project was created. The collaboration with EU sister projects resulted in virtual sharing of presentation information during European Aquaculture Society conferences in 2020 and 2021. All three sister projects were present during FutureEUAqua final conference, where they presented their projects. FutureEUAqua is visible on website, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube and printing material have been developed. We have finalized the communication and dissemination strategy

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We need to ensure resilience and sustainability of aquaculture systems and practices and genetic diversity to create robust fish that cope well with future challenges. FutureEUAqua has shown that present genetic strains are resilient towards temperature and novel feed ingredients. We have suggested improvements for tailor made feeding formulas for organic and conventional aquaculture of products that fulfil fish health and welfare, and nutritional requirements. We have suggested improvements of smart digital tools to monitor environment, health and welfare, and biomass in real time. We have suggested improvements of technologies for processing food and novel intelligent packaging for more environmentally friendly processing and packaging methods. We have improved the competences of those working and being trained to work within blue economy, and we have suggested targeted communication strategies to improve knowledge and consumer perception for aquaculture. We will support the implementation of the EU Common Fisheries Policy and contribute to policymaking in research, innovation and technology.

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