Author: Diego Lozano

The MedAID project (Mediterranean Aquaculture Integrated Development) aims to improve the key performance indicators (KPIs) of Mediterranean mariculture and considers health and welfare prerequisites for sustainable and profitable aquaculture in the Mediterranean area. Work Package 4: “Health management and diseases and fish welfare” addresses health issues and aims to provide tools and common strategies for the prevention and diagnosis of major diseases by creating an operative and collaborative Mediterranean platform. Task 4.1 aims to assess the risk of introduction and spread of emerging diseases at farm level, and to describe biosecurity measures to improve disease biosecurity management in seabass and seabream production in the Mediterranean basin.

A questionnaire survey was executed during the period 2018-2019. A convenient sample drawn from the MedAID database of farms/companies covering the Mediterranean basin included a total of 88 farms producing seabass and/or seabream from Croatia, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Tunisia, and Turkey. The purpose of this survey was to obtain an overview of farm and health management, biosecurity measures, fish health monitoring and disease diagnostics of Mediterranean marine fish farms. The questionnaire contained 19 different themes and was performed as face-to-face interviews. A univariate statistical analysis was run to test for significant association between farm mortality and various variables. Major findings were the significant association between farms reporting no major mortality due to pathogens and farms with good biosecurity practices.Continue reading

This report is part of MedAID Work Package 3 on Genetics and Breeding. This is a multidisciplinary WP that looks to develop and determine the performance of SNP chips in production and breeding populations, and to perform a comparative phenotypic and genetic study of different populations of European seabass and gilthead seabream.

In all animal bioproduction, lipids are important nutrients, because they are linked to production efficiency. The deposition of lipids in organs and tissues, e.g. adipose tissue, liver, muscle, heart and gonads, are also linked to the health, welfare and reproduction of the animals. Hence, compartmentalisation of the lipids is much studied. It is known that constant energy excess may lead to excessive lipid deposition in the body and internal organs and thereby increase the risk of metabolic disorders, oxidative stress and inflammation. However, not only the fat contents but also the fatty acid contents are studied in fish, in particular of the long-chained omega-3 fatty acids EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) , because of their beneficial health effects in fish and humans.Continue reading

MedAID Work-package 2 (Improving Zootechnical Performance) starts from the current context of knowledge in fish nutrition, and considers work on improvement in rearing conditions and feeding strategies fundamental to improve their related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This is a multidisciplinary WP that looks for correlations among different parameters related to feeding and growth.

The aquaculture industry seeks for shorter production cycles, implying faster weight gain, and targeting to reduce high fish somatic lipid reserves which decreases feed efficiency and fish quality. It is well-known that farmed fish accumulate substantial lipid amounts and significant perivisceral fat as they grow, due to intense feeding and lower physical activity. This remarkable lipid deposition significantly reduces feed utilization and product value.

Task 2.1 (Assessing the optimal feeding strategies in order to reduce the adipose tissue in commercial-sized fish) addresses the problem of fat deposition from a multidisciplinary approach in European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata). Considering the different factors involved in adiposity, this task has focused on the influence of the origin of fish, the impact of feed formulation and feeding strategies in order to reduce the adipose tissue in commercial-sized fish. The work implemented here was organized in two main research objectives, Subtask 2.1.1, which looked at the “Evaluation of the hormonal differences between lean and fat fish” and Subtask 2.1.2, which looked at the “Effect of feed composition and temperature on fat deposition”.Continue reading

The goal of MedAID is to increase the overall competitiveness and sustainability of the Mediterranean marine fish-farming sector, throughout the whole value chain. Despite the positive general trend in the growth of this industry, in recent years, seabream and seabass production has experienced problems of economic performance that affect companies’ competitiveness. Whereas economic research has covered almost all aspects of the economics of other species such as salmon, the same attention has not been given to seabass and seabream. In this context, the MedAID Project, through its Work Package 6 (Improving business performance and development of strategic marketing plans), focuses its research on various topics relevant for the seabass and seabream sector, such as assessment of economic efficiency; assessment of market efficiency; analysis of preferences and consumer behaviour; and economic analysis of technical improvements and innovations.

This Deliverable presents the results and conclusions of two tasks: i) Task 6.3 (Communication tools in Mediterranean aquaculture), whose main goal is to analyse the sources of information that give rise to positive or negative reactions on the demand side, which may affect market volume and prices; and ii) Task 6.4 (Assessment of preferences in the retail/consumer segment), which aims to assess consumers’ and traders/retailers’ preferences and willingness to pay for product attributes by using hedonic and choice models.Continue reading

The goal of MedAID is to increase the overall competitiveness and sustainability of the Mediterranean marine fish-farming sector, throughout the whole value chain. Despite the positive general trend in the growth of the seabass and seabream industry, in recent years production has experienced problems of economic performance that affect companies competitiveness. In this context, the MedAID Project and, within Work-package 6 (Improving bussiness performance and development of strategic marketing plans), Task 6.1 “Economics of aquaculture production” focuses on analyzing the production efficiency, productivity and optimal production in the Mediterranean aquaculture at company level focusing on seabass and seabream production.

Subtask 6.1.1 has developed a first study whose objective has been to investigate the technical efficiency and scale effects in Mediterranean sea cage farms producing seabass and seabream. Furthermore, environmental effects originating from the farms are also discussed. The study is based on data collected within the MedAID WP1. The technical efficiency effects are analysed using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and a Tobit regression is applied for a second stage analysis of the environmental variables. Results show that the mean technical efficiency is 0.84 and bias corrected mean technical efficiency 0.71. The interpretation is that the average farm could reduce inputs by 16% without reducing outputs, if the average farm was producing in the manner of the best-practice farms in the sample. Scale efficiency is rather low, suggestion that there is room for improving efficiency if firms are operating at a more optimal scale. For the environmental variables reported, feed conversion rate is in line with other papers, but the emission of nitrogen and phosphorus is higher than in other finfish aquaculture industries in EU. This might be due to different regulations on emissions between countries and different feeding strategies among different producers.Continue reading

More product innovation and the development of new products for new markets is clearly needed for a more long-term competitive supply-demand equilibrium of Mediterranean aquaculture (European Seabass, Gilthead seabream and meagre). As in the rest of the food industry, the improvement of the competitiveness and sustainability of the Mediterranean marine aquaculture sector is governed by current consumer trends, which translates into the need to transform the species of aquaculture to make available to consumers the safe, quality and convenience products they demand.

In WP5 we aimed to explore and validate the technical and market feasibility of developing different product alternatives of specific Mediterranean aquaculture fish species for commercial exploitation, identifying the best market solution for each type of fish species, transforming them into new value-added products, and tailor-made to satisfy the needs of different consumer profiles (children, senior, gourmet/premium, ethnic etc.), and finally adapted to the needs of diverse food and fish market channels.Continue reading