VALIAS aims to match the need for managing the marine Invasive Alien Species (IAS) populations with the growing demand for marine derived-products. Under the frame of circular economy, the valorization of unexploited IAS feedstocks can represent a sustainable strategy for the realization of a circular bio-economy, with the production of stable and safe food, fish feed and cosmetic ingredients. Various compounds with high commercial value obtained from fish and other invasive aquatic species byproducts, including collagen, enzymes, bioactive peptides, minerals and functional fatty acids will be valorized in VALIAS. VALIAS proposal can turn the current problem represented by marine IAS into a "WinWin" solution both for the European fisheries and for the companies active in the sector of aquaculture, nutrition and cosmetology. Specifically, VALIAS will contribute to the limitation of IAS stocks and of their negative ecological and economic impact on marine life, fisheries, human welfare, and health in European seas. Finally, VALIAS will contribute to the enrichment of the knowledge of the biology of IAS, a key objective of European Directive 1143/2014 on the prevention and management of introduction and spread of alien species. VALIAS will bring together experts from industry and academia specialized in interdisciplinary/inter-sectorial, yet highly complementary, research areas of Marine-Maritime Research, Aquaculture, Feed-Food technology and safety and Cosmetology. As a joint research and innovation project, it will develop a strong partnership involving 8 partners from 5 EU countries (EL, CY, IT, IE and BG) and with different technical backgrounds from the academic and non-academic sectors. The execution of the project and the knowledge sharing will be based on secondments (exchanges) of research and innovation staff with an in-built return mechanism strengthening collaborative research among the different countries and sectors.

Keeping up with the dramatic increase in world-food needs is a challenging task. Food supply is further affected by the latest consumers’ dietary trends, driving demand for food products of enhanced nutritional value, defined health benefits, increased safety and proven environmental sustainability. RIA4FOOD will tackle these challenges by proposing a new framework for functional food design. RIA4FOOD will utilise sea buckthorn berries as source of bioactive compounds, in conjunction with state-of-the-art methodologies from different disciplines, to showcase a scientifically-sound way of making food products functional and of proven added health value which can sustain nutritional needs of all consumer groups (healthy, diseased, obese, children, athletes, etc.). Utilising human-relevant in vitro dietary and disease models and a complete metabolomic, epiproteomic and proteomic analysis, the project will assess the physiological pathways affected from sea buckthorn consumption. These profiles will be then put under rigorous machine learning analysis, to produce algorithms that will calculate the correct amount of bioactive ingredients needed to confer the desired health benefits and will thus facilitate the design of new functional products. More importantly, RIA4FOOD will also explore new technologies to deliver fresh sea buckthorn health benefits to the market as snacks of increased shelf-life. For this the osmotic dehydration methodology will be put to the test: metabolomic, epiproteomic and proteomic profiles of osmotic sea buckthorn consumption will also be produced and compared to the respective profiles of the fresh fruit. Finally, additional predictive algorithms will be computed, to provide effective feedbacks to both the primary farming sector and the processing sector, thus fostering the optimisation of the new proposed food value chain.