Bio-conversion of non-food bio-resources to novel feeds for salmonids - a Nordic approach (NORDICFEED)

NORDICFEED is a Nordic co-operation project between SLU in Sweden, NMBU in Norway and eniferBio and LUKE in Finland. The aim of the NORDICFEED project is to strengthen the agricultural, forestry and aquaculture sectors in the Nordic region by developing sustainable feed ingredients from locally available food, agriculture, and forestry waste streams by advanced biotechnology.

In addition, the project aims to develop an interdisciplinary Nordic platform to generate knowledge and technologies that facilitates long-term responsible research and innovation, education and training of young researchers and strengthens the bioeconomy of blue and green sectors in the Nordic countries.

In this project, we will evaluate the health effects of bioactive components in microbial feed ingredients produced on various residual products. We will use in vitro methods with cells from salmonids and an in vivo infection models using saltwater shrimp as a bacteria-free model system for aquaculture-related research. In addition to using classic methods such as growth and feed conversion to study the effect of the new feed ingredients on salmon and rainbow trout, effects on the gut, gene expression and intestinal microbiota will be evaluated using various omics techniques. Economic and regulatory constraints for producing feed from waste will also be evaluated and at the end will life cycle analyses be performed to determine the environmental footprint of the use of microbial feed ingredients in fish feed.

Doctoral student:

Ashwath Gaudhaman, ashwath.gaudhaman@slu.se