Category: News

Crystal clear shrimp: next generation water filtration and waste up-cycling, for sustainable and profitable indoor shrimp farming

Duration: December 1, 2022 – November 30, 2025

Label: DBC project (ongoing)

The last decade has seen a strong growing interest in aquaculture and related activities in Flanders, both from the industrial side and from the government. A general problem that arises and complicates further scaling up to commercial sites is the high cost of production and the increasing pressure on local resources (water, space, raw materials). This project will make it possible to produce larger volumes of sea food on smaller areas, at a competitive market price and according to sustainable principles.

The overall objective of this project is to develop an indoor shrimp culture concept with zero water exchange and almost zero waste production. The new concept is based on improved clear-water technology, enabling intensive shrimp farming. At the same time, the footprint will also be reduced by recycling waste into a product that promotes shrimp health. To that end, C-shrimp will:

– Build a new experimental facility as the starting platform to develop all the tools. 

– Add a module to grow microalgae that will remove nitrate from the system.

– Develop a new filtration system to remove significantly more solid sludge from the shrimp RAS system. 

– Develop a new fermentation process to convert shrimp RAS waste into a feed material for shrimp farms. 

– Develop a modified shrimp diet that has immunostimulatory effects and contains less fish and soybean meal.

In the first place, this project is needed to farm sufficient shrimp for the expanding CRO work of IMAQUA in Flanders. If this new farming concept can be successfully commercialized in the future, it will be a breakthrough for European fish, shellfish and crustacean production and improve competition with imported products. The techniques developed will also be relevant for scaling up hatchery and nursery installations.

Partners: IMAQUA, Avecom, Trome, Ghent University

With the support of: VLAIO and the European Union

Contact person: Lien Loosvelt

Background

The FResCO project of the spearhead clusters Catalisti and De Blauwe Cluster was recognized as an intercluster project within the Flemish policy plan bio-economy, financed from the relaunch plan ‘Flemish Resilience’. With these funds, the Flemish government gives an extra impulse by supporting (inter)cluster projects between the research world and various private sectors that fall within one or more of the themes defined in the bioeconomy policy plan.

We just returned from another successful Aquaculture Europe event in Rimini, Italy. Its impressive convention center surprised not only with hundreds of participants and extra wide allays, but was a great space for sharing new big ideas and having in depth discussions on challenges in nowadays aquaculture.

Natasja Cox, our PhD student has presented very promising research results in her oral presentation “Development of standardised In Vivo WSSV individual and group challenge models for experimental infection studies in Litopenaeus vannamei shrimp.”

Meetings with partners, current and potential clients and extensive scientific discussions have been carried on even after hours with a glass of authentic Belgian beer brought all the way from Flanders (big thanks to our friends @Trome).

IMAQUA team is returning with a boost of enthusiasm and enriched with new knowledge. We are bringing home some inspirations, some ideas to be implemented and some to be challenged.

On the 1^st of June 2022, IMAQUA was invited to speak at the 13^th Annual Workshop of the National Reference Laboratories for Crustacean Diseases organized by the National Institute of Aquatic Resources at the Technical University of Denmark.

The purpose of this annual workshop is to provide a forum for knowledge exchange regarding the disease situation in the various EU Member States and to present and discuss scientific projects and new developments in crustacean disease research.

IMAQUA’s PhD candidate Natasja Cox presented our recent advances on the development of experimental infection models for WSSV.

Evelien De Swaef, Senior Project Manager at IMAQUA, presented our progress on the optimization of qPCR procedures for detection of shrimp viruses.

Imaqua gave a presentation on how Belgian Blue Science leads to entrepreneurship during the visit of European Commissioner Sinkevičius and Minister Crevits to Ostend.

https://ostendsciencepark.be/eu-commissioner-sinkevicius-stresses-importance-of-the-blue-economy-during-a-visit-to-ostend-belgium/

IMAQUA is proud to be part of the BlueMarine.Com3 project and of the progress we have made with shrimp breeding in Belgium in the past year.

The BlueMarine3.Com project is funded by the Flemish government through Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (VLAIO) and facilitated by the Blue Cluster program. It is a collaboration between different groups of Ghent University: the IOF consortium BLUEGent (Dr. ir. Margriet Drouillon), the Laboratory of Aquaculture & Artemia Reference Center (Prof. Dr. ir. Peter Bossier), the Laboratory for Phycology (Prof. Dr. Olivier De Clerck) and the Laboratory for Environmental Toxicology (Prof. Dr. Colin Janssen), and the following companies: Aquacultuur Oostende, Colruyt Group, DEME, IMAQUA, Proviron and SIOEN.