(Press-News.org) Kelp flies and marine yeast cultivated on by-products from the seafood industry can be used in feed for farmed salmon. Replacing fishmeal and soybeans can create more sustainable and circular food production, according to a thesis from the University of Gothenburg.
Food from aquaculture, such as farmed fish, is the food industry’s fastest growing sector. One key reason is that this is a nutritious and protein-rich food that is generally more sustainably produced than protein from land animals.
However, fish farming also has challenges. One is obtaining sufficient amounts of sustainable high-quality feed. Currently, fish feed accounts for about half of both the carbon footprint and production cost of farmed fish. By studying alternative and more sustainable fish feed ingredients, researchers at the University of Gothenburg hope to make aquaculture even more sustainable.
A new thesis proposes kelp fly larvae and marine yeast as suitable alternatives to fishmeal and soybeans in feed. These two raw materials can be produced using by-products from the seafood industry, which would otherwise be discarded. The fly larvae and marine yeast have over 50 per cent high-quality proteins and high levels of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids that fish need to grow and thrive – ultimately providing healthy food for humans.
Strengthening the fish’s immune system
“Both the fly larvae and the yeast have good nutritional values, and I noticed that the fish had a healthy appetite for the feed,” says Niklas Warwas, a doctoral student at the University of Gothenburg. “Another important benefit is that such feed ingredients can strengthen the immune system and thereby protect the fish from diseases.”
The focus of Niklas’s thesis is on investigating the opportunities for more circular food production that reduces environmental and climate impacts. The marine yeast was cultivated in nutrient-rich brine from the herring processing industry. This brine is a by-product that currently represents a cost for the industry, as it has to be treated before being discharged into the environment. The water could now be reused to produce a new raw material for fish feed instead. In a similar way, kelp flies were fed on a residual product from algae cultivation.
Greater food security
One important advantage is that neither the yeast nor the fly larvae require significant further processing before they can be used as raw material in fish feed, which can reduce the energy consumption of feed production.
“Both the yeast and the insects can be cultivated on a wide range of different organic materials. It is important to create local circular systems where the fish feed can be produced close to the processing factories, which in turn can be located close to the fish farms. This reduces transportation requirements and makes these alternative feed ingredients more competitive.”
In today’s fish feed, fish meal or soybeans are usually used as a protein source. Both of these are also potential food for humans. Reducing their use in fish feed contributes to greater food security at a time when global trade faces a number of challenges.
“My research can help Sweden to achieve more circular food production, in which by-products are reused instead of being discarded. This contributes to a more resource-efficient food industry, which is important when access to arable land and clean water is under threat and the population is growing.”
END
Yeast and kelp flies can replace fishmeal in feed
2024-02-28
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Meltwater in the North Atlantic can lead to European summer heatwaves, study finds
2024-02-28
Scientists from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) have discovered that increased meltwater in the North Atlantic can trigger a chain of events leading to hotter and drier European summers.
The paper, which will be published in the European Geosciences Union’s open access journal Weather and Climate Dynamics, suggests that European summer weather is predictable months to years in advance, due to higher levels of freshwater in the North Atlantic.
Discussing the implications, lead author Marilena Oltmanns, Research Scientist at the National Oceanography Centre, said: “While the UK and northern Europe experienced unusually cool and wet weather in Summer 2023, Greenland experienced ...
A threat to what is ours: How Japanese people react to perceived territorial infringements
2024-02-28
Osaka, Japan – Throughout the world, it is common for threats to national sovereignty or territorial integrity to stir up strong emotions among the public. Now, researchers from Japan have found that the strength of the reaction to such threats can break down along political lines in interesting ways.
In a study published in Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, researchers from Osaka University have revealed that the Japanese public is highly sensitive to what are known as “collective ownership ...
Experiment captures why pottery forms are culturally distinct
2024-02-28
Potters of different cultural backgrounds learn new types differently, producing cultural differences even in the absence of differential cultural evolution. The Kobe University-led research has implications for how we evaluate the difference of archaeological artifacts across cultures.
Cultural artifacts differ between cultures but are relatively stable within cultures. This makes pottery, and in particular its form, an important archaeological indicator to determine the presence of different cultural groups in specific locations and how they influenced each other over time. But where do such culturally stable variations arise from? The typical explanation for this is through “selective ...
A liking for licking
2024-02-28
HONG KONG (28 Feb 2024) — Unique insights into the social lives of cattle revealed in a new study by scientists at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) can enhance our understanding of animal behaviour and welfare. The study suggests that sex and social status influence social grooming (where one animal licks another, also known as allogrooming) among free-ranging feral cattle in Hong Kong.
The CityUHK researchers found that feral cattle performed preferential grooming of certain individuals and, in particular, that more dominant females received more grooming. This asymmetrical distribution of licking also applied to whom male cattle decided to ...
Scientists provide first detailed estimates of how much sediment is supplied to coral islands from the reef system
2024-02-28
Scientists have produced the first detailed estimates of how much sediment is transported onto the shores of coral reef islands, and how that might enable them to withstand the future threats posed by climate change.
Coral reef islands are low-lying accumulations of sand and gravel-sized sediment deposited on coral reef surfaces.
The sediments are derived from the broken down remains of corals and other organisms that grow on the surrounding reef. Therefore, the rate of supply of sediment from reefs is a critical control on island formation and future change.
The international team of researchers used data available for 28 reef islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, widely ...
Study details five cutting-edge advances in biomedical engineering and their applications in medicine
2024-02-28
Bridging precision engineering and precision medicine to create personalized physiology avatars. Pursuing on-demand tissue and organ engineering for human health. Revolutionizing neuroscience by using AI to engineer advanced brain interface systems. Engineering the immune system for health and wellness. Designing and engineering genomes for organism repurposing and genomic perturbations.
These are the five research areas where the field of biomedical engineering has the potential to achieve tremendous impact on the field of medicine, according to “Grand Challenges at the Interface of Engineering and Medicine,” a study published by a 50-person task force published ...
Traditional regression approach outperformed machine learning algorithms in predicting optimal surgical method in patients with submucosal tumors.
2024-02-28
Submucosal tumors (SMTs) are usually found in the stomach and esophagus during an upper endoscopy. Submucosal tunneling endoscopic resection (STER) and non-tunneling endoscopic resection (NTER) are the two most commonly used techniques in the treatment of gastric and esophageal SMTs. As novel technologies continue to shape the medical landscape, machine learning (ML) algorithms find increased application, demonstrating enhanced performance in various fields. Although some studies have evaluated the incremental value of flexible ML methods, comparisons with traditional logistic regression (LR) models are lacking.
To this end, a recent study by a team of researchers from China published in the ...
A survey on federated learning: A perspective from multi-party computation
2024-02-28
Federated learning (FL) has emerged as a popular machine learning paradigm which allows multiple data owners to train models collaboratively with out sharing their raw datasets. It holds potential for a wide spectrum of nalytics applications on sensitive data. For example, federated learning has been applied on medical big data analysis such as disease prediction and diagnosis without revealing the patients’ private medical information to thirdparty services. It has also been exploited by banks and insurance ...
New pediatric cancer marker, new hope for a treatment target
2024-02-28
Researchers have newly identified a universal, essential biomarker for the childhood cancer neuroblastoma – and a potential new target for treatment.
Neuroblastoma accounts for 15% of all pediatric cancer deaths and is the most common source of childhood tumors outside of brain cancer. The disease develops in early nerve tissue, usually in and around the adrenal glands, and typically affects children under age five. High-risk cases have a five-year survival rate of just 50%.
Led by UC San Francisco, researchers suspected the oncoprotein AF1q, which is known to play a role in leukemia and solid tumor progression, might be important in tumors of neural origin ...
Could we assess autism in children with a simple eye reflex test?
2024-02-28
Scientists at UC San Francisco may have discovered a new way to test for autism by measuring how children’s eyes move when they turn their heads.
They found that kids who carry a variant of a gene that is associated with severe autism are hypersensitive to this motion.
The gene, SCN2A, makes an ion channel that is found throughout the brain, including the region that coordinates movement, called the cerebellum. Ion channels allow electrical charges in and out of cells and are fundamental to how they function. Several variants ...