Tuesday November 30, 2021
The Fish Site —
Researchers with Nofima are hoping to establish a method that can make fish more robust and tolerant to various stresses.
Many methods are used to ensure that farmed salmon thrive, stay healthy and grow quickly. Nofima scientist Erik Burgerhout is working on programming the fish to become robust.
Nofima’s research will harness epigenetics to make the fish more resilient. The Programming Fish for Robustness (Progress) research project exposes fish to stressors such as low temperatures and low oxygen levels in early life phases, thereby influencing them to develop their own genetic material – RNA – to better withstand stress later in life.
“In order to produce a robust farmed fish, we must return to nature. Cold temperatures are natural for wild salmon, so it is actually the relatively high temperature normal to fish farming that is the stressful factor. We are now conducting research to understand what lies behind these mechanisms”, says Erik Burgerhout.