FutureEUAqua results shows that for salmon, seabass and seabream different genetic families perform equally well when fish were fed with conventional diet or with a diet with novel feed ingredients and reared in different temperatures. This support that current selection strategies for the tested species comply with future climate change and need for novel feed ingredients. Low trophic feed ingredients for feed for conventional and organic salmon, trout, seabass and seabream have been incorporated into feed that has been tested for all mentioned species in tank- and cage experiments. Results show that fish performance and welfare are satisfying when fed with novel and organic ingredients. Consumer awareness and perception of product labelling and aquaculture have been surveyed. Results show that the public awareness is generally low, but organic and conventional aquaculture have higher awareness than different niche production. A communication strategy based on results from the performed surveys, and regulatory framework challenges have been made. We tested the communication strategy twice during the project. Based on the lack of progress with respect of consumer knowledge and perception, there is a still need for targeted communication strategies. Regulations for aquaculture in Germany, France, Greece, and Norway have in common that available areas for aquaculture are bottlenecks for future growth and that the prospected growth in aquaculture, may have been too optimistic. In FutureEUAqua we have worked with different production systems, such as integrated multitrophic aquaculture systems (IMTA), recirculation aquaculture systems (RAS), in addition to conventional open sea cage systems. An IMTA review found that there is evidence that there are benefits of IMTA at the basin-scale, however, there are regulatory challenges that prevent large scale use of IMTA. In RAS an experiment to investigate effects of different salinity increase on biofilter performance showed that ammonia accumulation is a risk factor, but severe concentrations can be avoided by spending more time on increasing salinity. Continuous measurement of turbidity in the water may be a useful approximation of microbial activity in the water. Testing novel feed ingredients in RAS showed that fermenting rapeseed meal is not beneficial for RAS water quality. Wireless fish- and water quality sensors were calibrated, and then used for large scale experiment where wireless acoustic tags implanted in fish, water quality sensors and biomass sensors were used in commercial cage farming to monitor water quality and fish performance in real time. Innovations coming from the FutureEUAqua project were assessed in economy – and life cycle assessment (LCA) models and compared to current value chain. FutureEUAqua used different fish species from project experiments and commercial fish to test innovative processing methods that use less energy and are more environmentally friendly. An innovative method for rapid evaluation of fish texture has been developed. Finally, the application of innovative and environmentally friendly packaging material (vacuum packaging vs skin packaging) has been evaluated, with successful results and good fish quality using skin packaging. FutureEUAqua results have been frequently disseminated through open access peer-review publications, other media coverages and both internal and external presentations. The project provided seven webinars to the stakeholder platform where project results were presented. We have completed the exploitation plan and 21 Key exploitable results. Five online training sessions and one physical training were completed. An e-learning course covering the project was created. The collaboration with EU sister projects resulted in virtual sharing of presentation information during European Aquaculture Society conferences in 2020 and 2021. All three sister projects were present during FutureEUAqua final conference, where they presented their projects. FutureEUAqua is visible on website, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube and printing material have been developed. We have finalized the communication and dissemination strategy
