Acronym FitSmolt
Category
Aquaculture
Title Utvikling av seleksjonstester, treningsregimer og markører for å styrke smoltens robusthet og redusere tap i sjø - Improving Atlantic salmon smolt robustness to reduce losses in sea by development of screening tests, exercise regimes and markers Programme National Programme
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National Coordinator Sven Martin Jørgensen Coordinator email sven.jorgensen@nofima.no
Coordinator institution
NOFIMA - Norwegian Institute of Food, Fisheries and Aquaculture Research (Norway)
Institutions involved
UBC - University of British Columbia (Canada) ,
UBO - University of Western Brittany (France) ,
Start year 2013 End year 2016 Funding (€) € 977,694 Website https://www.fhf.no/prosjekter/prosjektbasen/900870/ Summary The industry works continuously with production optimization to reduce losses at sea. In order to achieve a desired future production increase, mortality due to poor smolt quality and disease must be significantly reduced. In a recently completed project, Preventive Health Measure by Optimizing Swimming Exercise to Counteract Lifestyle Diseases of Atlantic Salmon (FitnessFish), it has been shown that deliberate use of water speed to train the smolt before sea release improves the fish's robustness, among other things documented as better survival in controlled infection tests with post-smolt. This and other documentation that the smolt's robustness can be improved by optimizing the operating environment gives hope that further optimization through research can provide significant improvements for the industry. It has also been shown through various robustness projects, including funding from FHF and the Research Council, that the robustness of smolts is associated with swimming capacity in pairs. This provides a basis for assuming that robust fish can be identified in the early life phase and that weak fish can possibly be sorted out before significant costs have accumulated. Differences in robustness will be a product of genetics and the environment.
FHF has reduced losses at sea and production of robust fish within its strategic investments, and this project is part of this.
Goal to develop knowledge and tools that can be used to strengthen the smolt's robustness. This could contribute to reduced risk and extent of disease outbreaks by reducing the proportion of poor smolt with a lower capacity to cope with pathogens and the farming environment, and thus the project could have a positive effect on animal welfare and cost-effectiveness.
Sub-goals
• To explore the potential of using early development features and swimming capacity as sorting tests for robustness.
• To evaluate the importance of different training regimens in the early life phase in order to establish guidelines for optimal training protocols for the freshwater phase.
• To exploit the differences in life history between wild and farmed salmon to identify genes, polymorphisms and functional variations related to heart health that can provide knowledge to implement robustness in future breeding goals.
Keywords
Salmon;
Fish health;
Animal welfare;
Fish;
Disease;
Marine Region
76
Not associated to marine areas
0
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