Adaptation of fish aquaculture

Faced with stagnation in the quantities of fish from fisheries, aquaculture industry must increase production to meet growing demand for aquatic products. However, its current reliance on fishmeal and fish oil strongly constrains growth. The substitution of marine products by products of plant origin is an urgent need for sustainable development of aquaculture. To allow effective substitution, VEGEAQUA project aims to answer the following questions:

1- Fish selected on current plans rich in marine products (oils and fish meal) will they perform on diets of plant products?

2- Can improve the selection process to dispose of animal performance (growth, feed efficiency, yield, nutritional and organoleptic quality) on diets very low in marine products?

3- What strategies combining genetic selection and definition of appropriate sequences food can best optimize the capacity of aquaculture fish to provide a healthy and quality, in terms of economic performance in minimizing the use marine products? To answer these questions, the main breeders of the four major species of fish French (trout, bass, bream, thin) rely on the expertise of INRA and IFREMER teams, leaders in French on fish nutrition, aquaculture, and selection quality of aquaculture products in a project combining approaches in industrial experiments and finest fish in experimental laboratory.

This project was certified in April 2009.