Feed & Additive Magazine Issue 3 April 2021

SPECIAL STORY FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE April 2021 69 demands of the aquaculture industry and the consum- ers. However, fish performance, health status and final product quality (Kousoulaki et al., 2016) may be jeop- ardized when substituting dietary fishmeal by alterna- tive ingredients of lower nutritional value. Thus, new fish feeds and feeding strategies and the exploitation of the genetic potential of farmed fish, by selective breeding in using and transforming more efficiently the dietary component to the neces- sary essential nutrients, provides great potential and may allow safer larger steps in the progress of achiev- ing sustainable and resilient fish farming practices. Therefore, the onus is on the aquatic nutritionist to select and test ingredients, design formulations for commercially relevant tailored-made aqua feeds for the European aquaculture ensuring high perfor- mance, maintaining or enhancing nutritional value and environmental friendliness (Mente et al. 2019). In FutureEUAqua, resilient fish, efficient in uti- lizing sustainable innovative tailor-made diets are examined (Figure 1) for the two main aquaculture species, salmonids and marine Mediterranean fish. FutureEUAqua will finetune feed formulations for smart, optimised and better performing convention- al and organic aquaculture. Ingredients and tailored made potentially low eco-footprint aqua feeds will be selected, ensuring higher fish performance, nutri- tional quality, and safety. How can we improve feed to ensure optimal nutrition, safety and performance? The aqua farming production of salmonids in the EU is the most valuable commercial species, account- ing for about 45% of the value of total aquaculture output (Eurostat, 2019). Being a rapidly expanding sector, it places enormous pressure on the aquacul- ture industry to find sustainable and cost-effective ingredients in fish diets. Salmon alone requires more than 1.500.000 tons of aqua feeds per year. Plant ingredients are now mainly used to improve sustain- ability of ingredients used in feeds for high valuable carnivorous species like salmonids. However, plant ingredients have some restrictions, including com- petitive demand with human consumption and in- ternational market availability with escalating prices and questionable sustainability with respect to envi- ronmental stewardship, facts that forces the industry to move in other innovative solutions. In terms of sustainable feed formulations, recent advances prove, among other low trophic level organ- isms the concept of the nutritional (Kousoulaki et al., 2020) and technical (Samuelsen et al., 2018) feasibility of substituting fish oil by heterotrophically produced microalgae in salmon feeds. Such organisms may be grown on side stream biomass of other agricultural in- dustrial practices. Nevertheless, achieving the desirable circular economy, which demands recycling of organic and inorganic nutrients, we unavoidably press the cur- rent set regulatory limits for undesirable compounds in raw materials and seafood products with potential risks for animal health, welfare, production perfor- mance and product safety for the consumers. For the Atlantic salmon nutritional trials, Futu- reEUAqua compared dietary fishmeal and fish oil with main raw materials that are already or can be produced