Planned activities for dissemination of FISHBOOST results
In the project, one work package is dedicated to delivering impact through training, communication and dissemination: WP7. Please see below a schedule for planned conferences and meetings where FISHBOOST partners will present their results.
In addition we are planning to present results at national trout producer meetings in Spain, Italy, France, Poland and the United Kingdom and organise a technical training session for breeders and researchers in Montpellier in October 2018.
In addition we are planning to present results at national trout producer meetings in Spain, Italy, France, Poland and the United Kingdom and organise a technical training session for breeders and researchers in Montpellier in October 2018.
EVENTS
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When?
25-29 August 2018 25-29 August 2018 |
Where?
Montpellier, France Montpellier, France |
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FISHBOOST Events
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When?
February 2019 |
What?
Final meeting |
Where?
Oslo, Norway |
Latest FISHBOOST News
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June 13 - 2018 Succesfull FISHBOOST webinar on feed efficiency FISHBOOST organised an interactive webinar on feed efficiency for breeders and researchers on June 12. The two-hour lasting webinar was organized by EFFAB, LUKE, INRA and WUR and gathered many specialists. The scope of the webinar was on “prospects on selection of feed efficiency in aquaculture”. The targeted topics were i) general principles of improving feed efficiency, ii) economics and impact management, and iii) practical experiments on feed intake. The final panel discussion was on “Can we do more than select for fat percentage”. The webinar was well attended and the interactive atmosphere brought up some interesting discussions. We want to thank all attendees for their valuable input. March 19 - 2018
FISHBOOST researchers present results at the World Congress of Genetics Applied to Livestock Production conference Several researchers from FISHBOOST partners presented outputs from the project at the leading animal breeding conference which took place in Auckland, New Zealand this February. The conference, called the World Congress of Genetics Applied to Livestock Production (WCGALP) occurs every four years, and is generally considered premier event for researchers and professionals involved in genetic improvement of livestock (including fish). Scientists from INIA (Spain), The Roslin Institute (UK), Nofima (Norway) and Wageningen University (Netherlands) are amongst those who made FISHBOOST presentations.
The WCGALP conference ran from 11-16 February 2018. http://www.wcgalp2018.com/wcgalp18 Read more 
February 20 - 2018
Breeding program for gilthead seabream profitable after five years Kasper Janssen (WUR) Cost-benefit analysis in a recent study revealed that a breeding program for gilthead seabream can reach a positive net present value five years after its start. After ten years, the net present value of the studied breeding program was 2.9 million euro. For an integrated company with an annual production of 5000 tons, a breeding program can thus be highly profitable investment. A breeding program improves the genetic level of the animals used in production and thereby increases farm profit. Benefits of a breeding program depend on the rate of increase of the genetic level of animals used in production and production output of the company. The current study compared multiple alternative breeding program designs to a baseline breeding program that was based on the breeding program of Andromeda, Greece. A comparison between breeding program designs demonstrated that the profitability of a breeding program can be improved when production is supplied directly between the nucleus and producers instead of from the multiplier tier. Thus a multiplier tier delays the benefits of genetic improvement, analysis of the relation between the number of selection candidates and profitability revealed that. The optimum number of selection candidates increases with the length of the time horizon and production output. Using too many selection candidates relative to the optimum leads to less reduction in profitability than using too few selection candidates. https://gsejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12711-018-0372-3 December 2017
FISHBOOST results: Genomic selection using pooled DNA sequencing Genomic selection is a new powerful method to select the best individuals based on DNA data. It estimates the effects of genome-wide dense genetic markers (SNPs) and uses these estimates to select the parents for the next generation. This selection method is today used in Atlantic salmon breeding programs and its accuracies are tested in FISHBOOST on all the species of the project. In this study of the FISHBOOST project, we tested the accuracy of selection when DNA of individuals with extreme phenotypes had been pooled and genotyped either with whole-genome sequence data or with an SNP chip. We compared this accuracy to the accuracy of selection when the reference population is made up of individually genotyped fish. Read more 
December 2017
FISHBOOST results: How can we select fish to improve fillet yield? Selecting for fillet yield (percent fillet, as a proportion of body weight) is extremely important for species which are sold processed. Using real data from sea bass, sea bream and rainbow trout, as well as simulation approaches, INRA, Ifremer and Sysaaf showed that it is indeed possible to increase fillet yield by selection, to a modest but economically significant level, ranging from 0.4 to 1% per generation. The objective of aquaculture is to produce edible fish flesh for human consumption. While some species are sold whole, processing is developing, as consumers more and more require easy to prepare fillets. When the commercial product is fillet, improving fillet yield (the ratio of fillet weight to body weight) improves the economic efficiency of production, as more valuable fillet can be sold from the same amount of fish produced at a farm. This also improves the environmental efficiency of farming, as effluents from fish farms are grossly proportional to the quantity of fish produced: thus, producing more fillet from the same amount of fish produced reduces the environmental impact per kg of fillet produced. In addition, less fish waste has to be disposed at the slaughterhouse. Fillet yield is thus a typical production efficiency trait. Read more June 2017
FISHBOOST results: a cross-border research co-operation to develop breeding activities in common carp The Fishboost project encourages co-operation between the project partners to fulfill the main aim of the project – boosting European aquaculture. Collaborative work and sharing of knowledge between the partners promotes an effective use of resources at EU-level. The co-operation between the researchers from USB University of South Bohemia (Czech Republic), SYSAAF (France), IFREMER (France) and LUKE (Finland) has included researcher visits across the three countries to share knowledge and methodological experience to develop phenotyping and selective breeding of common carp in the Czech Republic. Read more 
April 2017
FISHBOOST General Assembly 2017 This year, the General Assembly of the FISHBOOST project took place on 5-6 April in Vodnany in the Czech Republic. Here the University of South Bohemia is located and they were the FISHBOOST partner that organised the meeting. 50 participants from the 26 project partners gathered to share results and upcoming activities with each other. Read more 
10 January 2017
FISHBOOST "Up one level in breeding for six fish species" European fish breeders can now integrate tools and technologies developed in FISHBOOST into their breeding programmes. The main goal of the EU supported project FISHBOOST is to advance selective breeding to the next level for the six main finfish species in European aquaculture. These species are Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, gilthead seabream, European seabass, turbot and common carp. Read more |
April 16 - 2018 Genomic selection methods in aquaculture breeding programmes Theo Meuwissen (NMBU) The showcase for genomic selection is dairy cattle, but aquaculture breeding programmes also yield substantial opportunities for genomic selection. Many traits of interest to fish breeders are not directly recorded on the candidates for selection for elite breeding, such as disease resistance traits and carcass traits. The recording of the former traits is performed in disease challenge tests on sibs of the candidates in order to avoid a disease outbreak amongst elite breeding animals, and the recording of the latter requires slaughtering of the fish. In addition, the large family sizes that are typical to fishbreeding schemes make it possible to set up reference populations within the families and apply the genomic selection technology within the families, i.e. the so-called within family genomic selection. Within families, the associations between genetic markers and genes are strong, so we do not need such high marker density as in traditional population-wide genomic selection, and the number of within family reference individuals can be relatively small. Theoretical developments show that within family genomic selection can reach an accuracy of 100% in fishbreeding because of the potentially large family sizes. This implies a substantial increase in accuracy of selection compared to the traditional family selection based fish breeding schemes, which reach a theoretical maximum accuracy of 70%. This is because e.g. a traditional challenge test for disease resistance reveal only which family has best disease resistance, whereas genomic selection also predicts which individual within a family has the best genes for disease resistance. Read more February 28 - 2018
Adaptation of rainbow trout genotypes to simultaneous changes in multiple plant-based diet ingredients A Kause, M Janhunen, A Nousiainen, H Koskinen, J Koskela (Natural Resources Institute Finland, Luke) Feed composition is one of the fastest changing environmental factors for farmed fish. For carnivorous fish like Atlantic salmon, European seabass, gilthead seabream, rainbow trout and turbot, fishmeal produced from wild-caught small pelagic fish species is considered as the superior protein source in feeds. Due to the depletion of wild fish populations and the consequent economical and environmental pressure, feed companies have replaced a major part of fishmeal with protein of plant-origin. The number of potential plant protein sources for farmed fish is large, and most nutritional research has focused on ingredients with security of supply, such as soybeans, wheat, corn and pea. However, some genotypes or fish strains may be less capable of adapting to these novel diets with protein of plant-origin. Selective breeding makes fish adapted to novel diets FISHBOOST results on one-year old rainbow trout show that indeed sires differ in their sensitivity to cope with challenging diets. Nevertheless, breeding programmes selecting for fish performance on the current on-growing feeds will make rainbow trout better adapted to the future feeds that use even more plant-protein concentrates to replace fish meal. With the availability of genetic variation and the limited amount of adverse genotype-by-diet interactions in rainbow trout, breeding programmes are aided to make fish more adapted to the novel feeds. Plant-based ingredients compromise fish performance Although the genotype-by-diet interactions are generally not of concern, there is high pressure to improve fish performance and welfare specifically on the new plant-based diets. Fish performance, measured as economically important traits such as growth, feed conversion ratio (FCR) and protein retention efficiency, is compromised when large amounts of plant-protein are added to fish feeds. The use of a mixture diet design in this study allowed the identification of diet mix combinations that support good fish performance. In contrast to the one-ingredient-at-a-time experiments, interactions between the ingredients could be observed and clearly showed benefits when including several plant protein mixes. Simultaneously the multiple ingredients support fish performance better than on their own, likely because they compensate for each other’s limitations. Future needs These results emphasise the further need for genetically improving the feed utilisation traits of rainbow trout on new plant-based feeds, and simultaneously, to tailor-make feeds specifically for the genetically superior farmed fish with their unique nutritional needs. This FISHBOOST study has linked animal genetics, the main focus on the FISHBOOST project, with the development of novel more sustainable fish feeds. Such information highlights the power of selective breeding to support sustainable development in other areas such as feed development.
The experiment was performed with the families originating from the Finnish national breeding programme for rainbow trout. In addition to feed utilization, the trait recording included non-destructive measuring of fillet lipid percentage.
Read more 13 June 2017 FISHBOOST results: Perceptions on aquaculture production and selective breeding In the FISHBOOST project, one work package is dedicated to investigating existing perceptions of aquaculture production. The work consisted of two parts, one part focussed on the perceptions of representative organisations within and surrounding the aquaculture sector, the other part focussed on the perceptions of (individual) aquaculture producers in specific. These perceptions are important to us, they give us an idea of the context in which the FISHBOOST research results will land and of the efforts we will have to make to get these results successfully implemented in the aquaculture sector of today. Read more 2 June 2017
FISHBOOST Results: Feed conversion ratio can be improved by selection for controlled lipid deposition FISHBOOST researchers have shown that prevention of excessive lipid deposition improves feed conversion ratio in rainbow trout. This also increases, yet slowly, the efficiency at which the fish utilizes proteins of feed (protein-retention efficiency), one of the most expensive and limited raw materials of the fish feeds. Read more
23 January 2017 FISHBOOST Movie is online! Aquaculture Breeding and FISHBOOST FISHBOOST Movie aims to briefly inform the public about the aquaculture production and breeding. The movie explains the principles of selective breeding in farmed fish and the contribution of FISHBOOST project to the European aquaculture breeding with a comprehensible language. Subscribe to FISHBOOST YouTube Channel from here. 
10 January 2017
FISHBOOST is at the Fish Farming Expert Newsletter The article "Selective breeding progress made" by Anna Sonesson (NOFIMA), FISHBOOST Project Coordinator is published at the Fish Farming Expert Website Tools and technologies developed by an EU project which aims to advance selective breeding of Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, gilthead seabream, seabass, turbot and common carp are now available to finfish producers. Read more at the Fish Farming Expert. |
