The overall objective of FutureEUAqua is to effectively promote sustainable growth of resilient to climate changes, environmental friendly organic and conventional aquaculture of major fish species and low trophic level organisms in Europe, to meet future challenges with respect to the growing consumer demand for high quality, nutritious and responsibly produced food. To this end, FutureEUAqua will promote innovations in the whole value chain, including genetic selection, ingredients and feeds, non-invasive monitoring technologies, innovative fish products and packaging methods, optimal production systems such as IMTA and RAS, taking into account socioeconomic considerations by the participation of a wide spectrum of stakeholders, training and dissemination activities. To achieve the objective and to relate to the work program, nine work-packages will contribute to improvements of future aquaculture. To ensure sustainable and resilient production of fish in the future we will work with tailor made fish and feed (WP1 and WP2), and validate fish performance and water quality in cost-effective production systems (WP4). Consumer demand and awareness of how to choose sustainable and climate friendly seafood is part of WP3. With the increasing production of seafood, we face space-conflicts, which, in combination with the current regulatory frameworks will be considered (WP3). Wireless sensor technology (WP5) for health and welfare monitoring and novel technology for product quality and packaging (WP6) to meet future demands, will be implemented. Stakeholders' knowledge and views will be important, and communication, dissemination (WP8) as well as training sessions (WP7) will be emphasized

AquaIMPACT is a major effort to integrate the fields of fish breeding and nutrition to increase the competiveness of EU's aquaculture of Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, gilthead seabream and European seabass, to ensure food and nutrition security and to satisfy consumer demands for high-quality seafood with limited environmental impact. These four species together represent 75% in volume and 89% in value of the total farmed finfish production. AquaIMPACT will develop products and services based on genomic selection for the European aquaculture breeding industry, with focus on cost efficient trait recording and genotyping, and selection for traits that can only be recorded under commercial conditions. By incorporating emerging ingredients, essential nutrients and appropriate additives developed by companies, novel nutritional and feeding strategies will be up-scaled and tailor-made specifically for the genetically improved fish arising from breeding programmes. The use of genomic technologies will be economically optimised and in combination with the nutritional solutions demonstrated to produce more robust, healthy, nutritious and resource-efficient fish, promoting industrial practices of re-circular bioeconomy, zero-waste and more efficiency use of natural resources. Impacts of the innovations will be measured under practical farming conditions, co-working with commercial partners, producing more profitable farming practices. Developments in imaging technology and spectroscopy, internet-of-things, machine learning and smart-software are harnessed to improve cost efficiency of operations and to provide novel products and services. The communication and exploitation will be linked to interactive multi-actor dialogue, bringing together views of consumers, regulatory authors and companies to increase societal acceptance of aquaculture as a sustainable source of high quality nutritional products.

The project aims at developing biotechnological tools to improve our understanding of the genomic basis for growth and robustness in European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), one of the most intensively farmed teleost species in the Mediterranean. Particular concern will be granted to increase species resistance to diseases, namely vibriosis [Vibrio (Listonella) spp.], pasteurellosis [Photobacterium (Pasteurella) damselae subsp. piscicida] and Viral Nervous Necrosis (VNN) infection. A family based breeding program, running high quality disease challenge tests on siblings to breeding candidates, can improve resistance by selecting broodstock from genetically best families. Exposing breeding candidates directly to disease to identify superior individuals is not indicated, but genomic analysis can be applied to efficiently discriminate among breeding candidates from the same family that otherwise will be ranked equally if only using family values. Therefore, genetic improvement of European sea bass through advanced selective breeding and molecular tools is expected to reduce production cost in the long term while minimise production vulnerabilities and risk. In addition, the species shows high susceptibility to stress and displays high basal cortisol concentrations. Preliminary results showed that cortisol responsiveness was a repeated trait and fish with constantly Low (LR) or High (HR) resting and post-stress cortisol concentrations were identified. Interestingly, some quantitative trait loci (QTL) that influence cortisol concentrations seem to be located in the same genomic regions with QTL suggested having an effect on weight. Since stress is being considered as an important co-factor for reproductive dysfunctions and disease outbreaks in this species which in turn hampers production, we aim to investigate more deeply how stress response measured by cortisol level and weight/growth interfere in order to develop a promising selection index in future breeding programmes. Selection based on rigorous phenotype and genotype measurements for increased survival against pathogens and response to acute stress conditions is expected to lead to more robust future generations in the European sea bass populations.