The UN's 2030 Agenda, adopted by world leaders in 2015, represents the new global sustainable development framework and sets 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Foremost is the Zero Hunger SDG, which seeks to end hunger and malnutrition, and ensure access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food. One of the most productive and efficient sources remains aquaculture, which is the process of rearing, breeding, and harvesting of aquatic species, in controlled aquatic environments, like the oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds, streams and purpose built Recirculating Aquaculture systems (RAS). According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), aquaculture is growing faster than any other major food production sector, with 50% of all sea food consumed is obtained by aquaculture. We are currently standing at a critical juncture to maintain healthy aquaculture conditions. To do so we need to continuously monitor the living environments of the fish and apply cutting edge bio-sensing to safeguard these fish farms and therefore our food security. The current consortium brings together the latest in biosensor technology, scaling up procedures, and aquaculture expertise, to safeguard our food security in the present and future years. By becoming an aquaculture pathogen testing hub and bringing to market a working diagnostic platform monitoring salmon pathogens, the consortium [Surfix (NL), Phix (NL), TunaTech (DE), CSEM (CH), and LRE Medical (DE)] aims to provide a long-term solution to ensure our collective food security. This project will build upon the BIOCDx project (ID: 732309) which successfully delivered a working prototype, however, due to lack of scalability, the overall costs of the biosensor remained very high (~€500/chip). Thus, the principal aim of PHOTO–SENS is to investigate scalable production of this technology (to reduce the costs 10 fold; €50/chip), and validation with an end–user in the aquaculture market.

Marine (blue) biotechnology is the key to unlocking the huge economic potential of the unique biodiversity of marine organisms. This potential remains largely underexploited due to lack of connectivity between research services, practical and cultural difficulties in connecting science with industry, and high fragmentation of regional research, development and innovation (RDI) policies. To overcome these barriers, EMBRIC (European Marine Biological Resource Infrastructure Cluster) will link biological and social science research infrastructures (EMBRC, MIRRI, EU-OPENSCREEN, ELIXIR, AQUAEXCEL, RISIS) and will build inter-connectivity along three dimensions: science, industry and regions. The objectives of EMBRIC are to: (1) develop integrated workflows of high quality services for access to biological, analytical and data resources, and deploy common underpinning technologies and practices; (2) strengthen the connection of science with industry by engaging companies and by federating technology transfer (TT) services; (3) defragment RDI policies and involve maritime regions with the construction of EMBRIC. Acceleration of the pace of scientific discovery and innovation from marine bioresources will be achieved through: (i) establishment of multidisciplinary service-oriented technological workflows; (ii) joint development activities focusing on bioprospection for novel marine natural products, and marker-assisted selection in aquaculture; (iii) training and knowledge transfer; (iv) pilot transnational access to cluster facilities and services. EMBRIC will also connect TT officers from contrasted maritime regions to promote greater cohesion in TT practices. It will engage with policy-makers with the aim of consolidating a perennial pan-European virtual infrastructure cluster rooted in the maritime regions of Europe and underpinning the blue bioeconomy.