Sustainable aquatic food production systems

 

PIs

Kristina Sundell, University of Gothenburg

Phillip Dettleff, Universidad Católica

Participants

Evangelia Zioga, KTH

Fredrik Gröndahl, KTH

Pontus Gunnarsson, SLU

Juan Antonio Valdés, Andrés Bello National University

Ricardo Moreno, P. Universidad Católica

Natalia Lam, Universidad de Chile

Pablo Gallardo, Universidad de Magallanes

Marica Andersson, University of Gothenburg

Thrandur Björnsson, University of Gothenburg

Niklas Warwas, University of Gothenburg

 

Results

The purpose of this workshop was to focus on the ecological, economic and societal sustainability of aquatic food production, looking at the whole value chain of farmed seafood, from primary production, diversification of species and production systems, aqua-feed development, products, and product development, to sustainability assessment of seafood value chains.

The workshop revisits ongoing national initiatives, including the Swedish Mariculture Research Centre (SWEMARC, UGOT), the newly Formas financed national Blue Food – Centre for future seafood, and the CONICYT-funded Program for the Diversification of Chilean Aquaculture (PDACH), initiatives that include several ACCESS-linked Swedis and Chilean universities.

At the end of the workshop, the group had found several common points between the research groups from Swedish and Chilean Universities, establishing several agreements to collaborate in ongoing research associated with two main topics. The first topic was the diversification of species and aquaculture systems, in which we agree to collaborate in the following research lines: (i) Combine molecular and physiological techniques to unravel stress and welfare mechanisms and effects of environmental stressors; (ii) Stress and welfare indicators in invertebrates; (iii) Protocols and increased basic biological knowledge for “new” aquaculture species – parallel work with local (cusk eel/wolffish, sea urchin/sea cucumber, king crab/lobster); (iv) Co-culturing and IMTA – parallel work with local species, transfer of knowledge and experiences.

The second topic was Alternative feed and raw material development, in which we agree to collaborate in the following research lines: (i) Formulation and production of novel feeds using local raw materials, focus on marine ingredients; (ii) Utilization of by-products from aquaculture, agriculture and industry as feed ingredients; (iii) Utilization of novel biorefining methods (fermentation for algae processing). The group further agreed on the necessity of setting these collaborative research and developments into a sustainability context and opened for life cycle analyses of the research where possible. These collaborations will be executed through a joint initial review publication on Sweden-Chile aquaculture challenges for sustainability, the collaboration within already ongoing research projects, joint research applications, intellectual collaborations and young researcher interchange.