Organic trout fry is now available from Danish hatcheries one year ahead of the deadline for implementation of the EU regulation 1364/2013, requiring the life cycle of all animals in organic aquaculture to be 100% organic.
Denmark is among the leading European organic aquaculture producers and the new regulation threw a major challenge at the industry, which is now working towards strengthening the sector further with a new national funded project called RobustFish.
The RobustFish project will focus on making organic trout fry more robust in order to prevent disease and the need for medical intervention.
It will investigate the robustness of the various fractions of fry. This includes investigations of the influence of the dietary content of essential ?-3 fatty acids (HUFAs), which are important for growth, health and welfare of the fish, as well as testing robustness to stress.
Stress and RTFS tests will be performed to investigate if these two factors can be included in strategies to increase the robustness of the fry. Further, the effect on health and welfare of water treatments using approved agents in organic aquaculture will be tested.
It is hoped that the outcome of RobustFish will also improve the productivity of conventional trout farming by lower prevalence of RTFS, reduced medication and lower environmental impact.
The project is carried out in cooperation between Technical University of Denmark (DTU Aqua and DTU Vet), University of Copenhagen (Dep. of Food & Resource Economics), University of Aalborg (Dep. of Development and Planning) and The Danish Aquaculture Organisation.
Mercator Media Ltd 2015