The overall objective for SelectOrganic is to develop selective breeding programs for the organic farming of European sea bass, gilthead seabream, rainbow trout and Atlantic salmon, respecting high animal welfare requirements and aiming at improving species resilience, disease resistance, product quality and resource efficiency. Furthermore, we aim at fish utilizing as much alternative feed materials as possible. This will contribute to “develop and improve good practices in organic aquaculture, make sustainable use of biodiversity". Four Case Studies are outlined with different tasks in 5 WPs. Each case study addresses each of the four key species above and specific traits of economic and welfare importance in addition to key challenges in organic aquaculture. We will define breeding objectives, develop phenotyping of “new organic” traits, estimate genetic parameters and develop the required organic reproduction technology and selection methods to address critical knowledge gaps or challenges. A specific welfare auditing WP will exploit experiments from two other WPs on resource efficiency, bacterial disease resistance and heat wave resilience to test and apply species-specific fish welfare indicators. The project outcome will be technologies, methods, and strategies for selective breeding for organic fish farming, while maintaining genetic diversity and contributing to non-toxic environments and to maintain biodiversity. Finally, successful innovations, including many aiming at precision farming, will be integrated in cost-effective breeding plans for organic aquaculture. Socioeconomic studies on non-market valuation of public goods as fish welfare and ecosystem services in addition to policy incentives will involve a broad range of actors. Together with communication, dissemination, and training activities, this ensures successful exploitation and significant impact of the project output and expanded organic aquaculture in Europe.

The vision of the EU aquaculture industry is to grow substantially in the next decade and to provide annually 4.5 million tons of sustainable food products. To this aim, NewTechAqua intends to expand and diversify EU production of finfish, molluscs and microalgae by developing and validating technologically-advanced, resilient and sustainable new solutions. The organizational approach of NewTechAqua is to group the solutions in 6 different categories: feed, Industry 4.0, sustainable farming, genetics, new species and new products. They will be validated on conventional (Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, seabass and seabream) and emerging (greater amberjack, meagre, Senegalese sole and grey mullet) finfish species, molluscs (Pacific oyster, mussel) and microalgae. NewTechAqua is structured in 9 WPs. WP1 will conceive, formulate, produce and demonstrate three innovative sets of aquafeeds (pro-health, organic, zero waste). WP2 will establish new AI epidemiological models for enhancing the control of parasite outbreaks in Norwegian and Mediterranean farms. Sustainable aquaculture will be also promoted by advanced model systems and technologies for mollusc and in-land fish farms ecointensification. WP3 will develop innovative breeding programmes to improve performance, robustness and quality of farmed fish, molluscs and microalgae, while WP4 will achieve significant advances in reproduction technology of three emerging fish species. High-quality seafood products and sustainable food processing techniques for valorisation of by-products will be validated. WP6 will develop a set of indicators to monitor and measure progress towards the expected impacts, while market uptake of NewTechAqua results and outputs will be ensured by a detailed exploitation strategy (WP7). Finally, NewTechAqua will achieve well-targeted communication, dissemination and maximum transfer of generated know-how and project new technologies (WP8).