Green Aquaculture Intensification in Europe (GAIN)

GAIN was a three-and-a-half-year project funded by EU Horizon 2020, aimed at supporting the ecological intensification of aquaculture in the EU in order to increase the industry’s production and competitiveness, while ensuring sustainability and compliance with EU regulations on food safety and environment.

Tangible results: The project designed innovative feeds based on emerging ingredients and by-products from GAIN innovative circular processes and tested them on Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, seabream, seabass and turbot, with positive growth performances and feed conversions. GAIN also prototyped an Information Management System: a platform for the implementation of Precision Aquaculture that is based on sensors for real time data collection, Big Data, Internet of Things and predictive mathematical models. In addition, innovative processes to recover nutrients from Recirculating Aquaculture Systems wastewater and sludges and from fish mortalities were optimised. The project also developed the Eco-Intensification Sustainability Index (EISI) and tested it on Atlantic salmon supply chain. It was presented as a traffic light system that showed a range of performance within the four sustainability categories (environment, social responsibility, economic performance and animal welfare).

Application/relevance: The project studied and tested ways to rend viable the ecological intensification of aquaculture, which, if done successfully, can provide more and better aquatic products and jobs, as well as improve trade balance by reducing imports. For instance, GAIN results showed that feed formulations including ingredients from aquaculture and fishery by-products adhering to circular economy principles, will be fully viable options for eco-efficient European fish farming.