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Content archived on 2024-06-18

The development of an SME-friendly European breeding program for hard corals

Objective

As a result of an increased public interest in marine life, a growing number of zoos and public aquaria try to display live corals in their marine exhibitions. In contrast to the commercial sector of marine ornamental trade, which is still largely dependent on collections from the wild, it is the policy of zoos and aquaria to display organisms that originate from sustainable inland breeding facilities. The proposed project aims to improve inland breeding and husbandry methodologies for corals, to be applied by zoos, public aquaria and also by the ornamental trade.

There are three specific goals:
1) To acquire the protocols for sexual and asexual coral breeding in captivity, including breeding and feeding techniques and induction of natural coral colony morphogenesis

2) To improve coral husbandry by: a. developing generic bioassays to evaluate biotic and abiotic husbandry parameters and to monitor coral health, b. elaborating methods for identification and treatment of coral diseases, c. optimisation of transport and acclimation practices

3) To train the SME's staff with coral breeding and husbandry protocols and methodologies.

The CORALZOO project is therefore the first comprehensive approach that makes use of molecular biology, mathematical, toxicological and nutritional tools for the development of unique breeding protocol for corals in captivity. This will enable the SMEs to establish large stocks of coral colonies (the asexual approach) that represent a high genetic variability (the sexual approach) and exhibit natural growth forms. The results of the present work will support the whole industrial sector in Europe, will exacerbate European competitiveness, and will facilitate cooperation in research activities between the European SMEs in this sector. Moreover it will strongly contribute to the environmental protection of wild corals: the zoos will become self-supporting and the trade will become sustainable.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP6-2003-SME-2
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

Collective - SMEs-Collective research projects

Coordinator

WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITEIT
EU contribution
No data
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

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Participants (9)

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