Acronym NEW COPE
Category
Marine Biotechnology
Title Coping with new environments and production methods: Animal welfare and stress biology applied to modern salmon farming 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 Tore Kristiansen Coordinator email NA
Coordinator institution
IMR - Institute of Marine Research (Norway)
Institutions involved
NA - Benchmark Genetics Norway AS (Norway) ,
EV ILVO - Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Belgium) ,
UGent - Ghent University (Belgium) ,
NA - Marine Harvest Norway AS (Norway) ,
NIVA - Norwegian Institute for Water Research (Norway) ,
NMBU - Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway) ,
Start year 2017 End year 2021 Funding (€) € 880,100 Website https://prosjektbanken.forskningsradet.no/en/project/FORISS/267788?Kilde=FORISS&distribution=Ar&chart=bar&calcType=funding&Sprak=no&sortBy=date&sortOrder=desc&resultCount=30&offset=630&ProgAkt.3=H20-INFRA-Research+infrastructures Summary "The rapid development of salmon aquaculture incurs renewed focus on production biology and fish welfare. E.g. mortalities caused by delousing procedures has made a solid leap with the transition from traditional delousing in sea cages into treatment in system which relies on crowding and pumping the fish. This, together with the development and implementation of novel production methods such as recirculating systems, rearing at exposed localities, and alternative cage designs, requires robust fish that are able to cope with current and future rearing technologies and changing environments. As of today it is not known whether lines and families that perform well in the traditional production systems are also those that will thrive best under novel conditions. To approach this question the current project will study how an agnate pedigreed family material is responding when reared under different conditions in both freshwater (normal, repeated acute stress, hypercapnia) and saltwater (traditional vs submersible cages). Close monitoring of behavioural and physiological phenotypes as well as underlying genetic traits will be employed to facilitate the identification of biological mechanisms underlying variable ability to adapt to new, potentially stressful environments. Previously established models and novel welfare indicators for animal welfare monitoring will be further developed and verified by neurobiological studies, in order to support the assessment of stress coping ability and ascertain fish welfare under novel conditions. Moreover, there are indications that a genetically determined association between stress responsiveness and heart failure underlies the recent increase in acute mortality of large pre-harvest fish during stress exposure (e.g. delousing). A genome wide association analysis together with physiological studies will be performed in an attempt to explain the mechanism behind such hitherto unexplained acute mortality and production loss.
The project has shown that chronic stress negatively affects all families and hypercapnia can result in fish not coping with acute additional stress. Heritability calculations showed that there was little rearrangement of the families under different environments and that stress tolerance was poorly heritable. This was an important result for breeding companies, confirming that previous selection of breeding fish has been correct.
Morphological and molecular indicators of mortality risk identified in this project are promising indicators for use in future risk assessments by fish health personnel for planned crowding and delousing operations.
The project has also generated important data and hypotheses for other newly started projects aimed at elucidating heart health and smolt quality.
Project participants have gained new knowledge in fish neurobiology, stress physiology, and gene regulation, the importance of various welfare indicator levels, cortisol in fish scales, heart morphology and genomics, and individual growth patterns."
Keywords
Genetic;
Fish;
Cage aquaculture;
Fish health;
Salmon;
Open sea aquaculture;
Fish biology;
Marine Region
76
Not associated to marine areas
0
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