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H2020 program / Horizon Europe

EUAqua.Org

Integrative breeding strategies for the transition of EUropean AQUAculture towards sustainable ORGanic production

Principal Investigator
Group Leader

Benjamín Costas completed a Masters in Aquaculture by the University of Algarve in 2006, and in 2011 achieved a PhD degree in Animal Science by the University of Porto. Benjamín Costas is currently Principal Researcher at CIIMAR and Head of Aquatic Animal Health, a young and strongly motivated team highlighting nutritional immunology as main research line. Dr. Costas is passionate about aquatic animal health and welfare and is actually coordinating several national and international projects in those topics. Main research is targeting novel strategies to improve fish disease resistance and welfare as well as on non-invasive biomarkers of animal health.

RESEARCH GROUPS:

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EUAqua.Org is aimed at boosting organic fish production in Europe by developing highly innovative solutions to fill key knowledge gaps and overcome the most relevant factors limiting the competitiveness for organic farming of Atlantic salmon, European sea bass, gilthead sea bream, and rainbow trout.

Key technological advancements in phenotyping, genotyping, and genomic prediction methods will be developed by EUAqua.Org through the integration of different disciplines and approaches. This will provide essential tools for cost-effective, welfare- and environment-friendly organic aquaculture. The implementation of these tools at the industry level will be ensured by a comprehensive scientific, public, and industrial communication and dissemination programme, with exploitation of the project objectives and key results to create impact, including a multi-module open-access online training course that will be co-developed with key stakeholders (breeding companies, fish farmers, feed producers). In parallel, a tailored set of intervention strategies will be designed to promote awareness and acceptance of OA products in European consumers, through a behavioural economics approach. The project will build upon outputs of completed and ongoing national and EU projects, fully exploiting existing knowledge and leveraging the direct involvement of EUAqua.Org partners in multi-disciplinary research on advanced fish genomics, fish nutrition, fish health and welfare, consumer studies.

Research Teams
Leader Institution
Universita Degli Studi di Padova - UNIPD, Italy
Program
Horizon Europe
Funding
Other projects