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The goal of MedAID is to increase the overall competitiveness and sustainability of the Mediterranean marine fish-farming sector, throughout the whole value chain. Despite the positive general trend in the growth of this industry, in recent years, seabream and seabass production has experienced problems of economic performance that affect companies’ competitiveness. Whereas economic research has covered almost all aspects of the economics of other species such as salmon, the same attention has not been given to seabass and seabream. In this context, the MedAID Project, through its Work Package 6 (Improving business performance and development of strategic marketing plans), focuses its research on various topics relevant for the seabass and seabream sector, such as assessment of economic efficiency; assessment of market efficiency; analysis of preferences and consumer behaviour; and economic analysis of technical improvements and innovations.

This Deliverable presents the results and conclusions of two tasks: i) Task 6.3 (Communication tools in Mediterranean aquaculture), whose main goal is to analyse the sources of information that give rise to positive or negative reactions on the demand side, which may affect market volume and prices; and ii) Task 6.4 (Assessment of preferences in the retail/consumer segment), which aims to assess consumers’ and traders/retailers’ preferences and willingness to pay for product attributes by using hedonic and choice models.Continue reading

The goal of MedAID is to increase the overall competitiveness and sustainability of the Mediterranean marine fish-farming sector, throughout the whole value chain. Despite the positive general trend in the growth of the seabass and seabream industry, in recent years production has experienced problems of economic performance that affect companies competitiveness. In this context, the MedAID Project and, within Work-package 6 (Improving bussiness performance and development of strategic marketing plans), Task 6.1 “Economics of aquaculture production” focuses on analyzing the production efficiency, productivity and optimal production in the Mediterranean aquaculture at company level focusing on seabass and seabream production.

Subtask 6.1.1 has developed a first study whose objective has been to investigate the technical efficiency and scale effects in Mediterranean sea cage farms producing seabass and seabream. Furthermore, environmental effects originating from the farms are also discussed. The study is based on data collected within the MedAID WP1. The technical efficiency effects are analysed using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and a Tobit regression is applied for a second stage analysis of the environmental variables. Results show that the mean technical efficiency is 0.84 and bias corrected mean technical efficiency 0.71. The interpretation is that the average farm could reduce inputs by 16% without reducing outputs, if the average farm was producing in the manner of the best-practice farms in the sample. Scale efficiency is rather low, suggestion that there is room for improving efficiency if firms are operating at a more optimal scale. For the environmental variables reported, feed conversion rate is in line with other papers, but the emission of nitrogen and phosphorus is higher than in other finfish aquaculture industries in EU. This might be due to different regulations on emissions between countries and different feeding strategies among different producers.Continue reading

More product innovation and the development of new products for new markets is clearly needed for a more long-term competitive supply-demand equilibrium of Mediterranean aquaculture (European Seabass, Gilthead seabream and meagre). As in the rest of the food industry, the improvement of the competitiveness and sustainability of the Mediterranean marine aquaculture sector is governed by current consumer trends, which translates into the need to transform the species of aquaculture to make available to consumers the safe, quality and convenience products they demand.

In WP5 we aimed to explore and validate the technical and market feasibility of developing different product alternatives of specific Mediterranean aquaculture fish species for commercial exploitation, identifying the best market solution for each type of fish species, transforming them into new value-added products, and tailor-made to satisfy the needs of different consumer profiles (children, senior, gourmet/premium, ethnic etc.), and finally adapted to the needs of diverse food and fish market channels.Continue reading

There is a trend towards increased concern for the welfare of animals under human care, and this concern has expanded to include the welfare of farmed fish. However, at present, the necessary operational welfare indicators (OWI) and implementation protocols required to monitor and safeguard the welfare of farmed fish are lacking. Operational Welfare Indicators (OWI) in aquaculture are measures that can be used to assess welfare status in individual animals or groups of animals, made practical and operational on commercial aquaculture facilities (Martins et al. 2012). The best set of OWIs for a particular situation will depend on variables such as farmed species, life stage, husbandry system, environmental conditions, especially temperature and photoperiod.

The main objective of this report is to list a potential range of targeted OWI protocols to be used in the industry to improve the knowledge on welfare of seabream, the main fish species cultured in the Mediterranean area.Continue reading

SNP arrays are enabling tools for high-resolution studies of the genetic basis of complex traits, and for incorporating genetic markers to expedite genetic gain in selective breeding programmes. The development of a SNP array for the European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and the gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata) would be of significant importance for Mediterranean aquaculture, as it would allow, among other relevant applications, to implement Genomic Selection (GS).

GS is a method by which genome-wide genetic marker data are used to predict the breeding values of individuals with higher accuracy than pedigree-based methods. Consequently, high-density marker panels have a major potential for accelerating genetic gain of breeding programmes through GS, particularly for traits practically impossible to measure on selection candidates, such as disease resistance.Continue reading

Aquaculture, besides being an economic activity that generates employment in coastal and rural areas, is a source of food, essential to ensure food security. This is clearly specified in the FAO report The State of Fisheries and Aquaculture 2018 (FAO, 2018), which states that “With capture fishery production relatively static since the late 1980s, aquaculture has been responsible for the continuing impressive growth in the supply of fish for human consumption”.

In the Mediterranean, the demand for fishery products has been rising steadily during the last decades, due to an important population growth and an increase in human per capita consumption (CIHEAM, 2010). These developments have caused a growing pressure on Mediterranean fish stocks, most of which (about 78%) are currently being fished at biologically unsustainable levels, according to FAO-GFCM (FAO, 2018b). Thus, as in other areas, Mediterranean countries are facing an important and growing seafood supply deficit that can only be compensated by aquaculture.Continue reading