Eight partners from six countries, including Prof. Vasilis Valdramidis from the Department of Food Sciences & Nutrition within the Faculty of Health Sciences, are working together to improve fish production and quality by developing fish feed from alternative proteinaceous biomass sources such as algae, duckweed, insects and microbiomes.
Prof. Valdramidis is the principal investigator and he is assisted by Research Support Officer, Mr Jefferson de Oliveira Mallia. They took on the challenge after personal communication with the other partners of the consortium and a further communication with MCST, the Malta Council for Science and Technology.
AquaTech4Feed, as the project is titled, is aimed at successfully producing a novel sustainable aquaculture production process. This process will then pave the way forward for commercial exploitation and dissemination of the project results.
AquaTech4Feed falls under the ERA-NET CoFund on the Blue Bioeconomy, which is a wider collaboration addressing gaps such as the uses of waste material from fisheries, the use of biotechnology to develop smart food systems, and the unlocking of the potential of microbiomes to support growth in the aquaculture industry, among others.
The project, which started on 15 May 2020, will have a duration of 36 months, and will be implemented by the 8 participating partners. Communication will take place virtually over the coming months.
The other partners are academics from the Istituto Sperimentale Italiano Lazzaro Spallanzani, the Bantry Marine Research Station in Bantry, Ireland, the Leibniz Institut for Bioeconomy, the University of Almeria, the Teagasc Food Research Centre, and from G-FISH, an SME in Kastori Lakonias in Greece.
“As part of the circular economy principles, sustainability in food business is a key element which can be addressed by innovation. Our Department is performing research on novel technologies for food/feed processing aiming at reducing energy and costs and achieving safety and product stability”, said Prof. Valdramidis.
More information can be found on the BlueBio COFUND Facebook Page.
AquaTech4Feed is partly funded by the Malta Council for Science & Technology (MCST) through the BlueBio ERA-Net Cofund.