At EAS2024 in Copenhagen our European Percid Fish Culture group had a workshop and a network moment. Our EPFC workshop, open for everyone, was held on 26 August and had a nice audience what lead to interesting discussions.
First, we had Dr. Sinem Zeytin-Schüning from the Alfred-Wegener-Institut talking about the development of an automated assessment of the quality of pikeperch. Her work on automated determination of the degree of deformation/percentage of deformed larvae, juvenile or market-size pike perch should make the work of breeders easier in future. For the moment a simplified and largely automated determination of image analysis is being developed to assess the quality of the fish within the research project “QualiZander”. It will be crucial to work together with companies and institutions on this topic. There was also a questionnaire for the pikeperch farmers to fill in, and what I highly recommend. Only by supporting these initiatives we can push research in the direction of our needs.
Secondly it was Edson Panana Villalobos who presented the new weaning protocol for pikeperch of inagro. In this protocol we start weaning at day 15, five days earlier than the standard protocol we use at Inagro. For non EPFC-CG members you can email Edson (Edson.pananavillalobos@inagro.be) if want to receive the presentation or discuss the results.
After a short break Stefan Teerlinck announced that Inagro will stop with keeping a broodstock of pikeperch and so the broodstock is for sale. Of course inagro will continue to perform research with pikeperch but will depend for its supply of eggs, fingerling etc. on other partners/companies.
David Nusbaumer, company Akymed, presented their technique for cryopreservation of pikeperch sperm as an option for companies who are interested in the genetics of the Inagro broodstock but do not want to import live fish. If you are interested in this technique or the presentation David gave on this subject you can contact David: David@akymed.com .
To end the workshop we got some insights in the research done in Poland. This was presented by Rossella Debernardis of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Olsztyn. As fish larvae grow, one of the biggest challenges they face is learning how to feed themselves. In certain fish species, like perch, not all the larvae manage to start eating at the same time. Some figure it out quickly, while others struggle. We wanted to know what makes some larvae succeed and others fail at this important stage. We found that fish larvae only have about three days to start eating on their own. If they don’t, they won’t survive. This is a big problem for fish farms because many of the larvae don’t make it. Interestingly, the fish that start feeding right away are often the healthiest. These findings help researchers understand why some fish do better than others, which might help improve farming practices and contribute to the higher survival rates in fish farming."
To make our stay at Copenhagen perfect we also had an EPFC dinner on Thursday evening, 36 people joined us and made this into a nice network event.
