OCEAN ERA INC — Department of Commerce SBIR Phase I: 8.1.1

Description

While certain forage fisheries remain sustainable and well-maintained, they clearly are not scalable – to expand domestic marine aquaculture and increase the nation’s seafood security, aquafeed formulations must be adapted to make greater use of sustainable agriculture proteins and oils produced in America’s heartland. Kampachi Farms and University of Nebraska have been working jointly to replace fishmeal in diets for our Kampachi (Seriola rivoliana) with soy protein concentrate (SPC). This research has been successful, with fish performing acceptably on diets containing 40% SPC and <12% fishmeal. However, the end goal is to develop a wild-marine-free diet formula, and soy inclusion rates above 42.5% have resulted in gastroenteric stress, decreased performance, and increased susceptibility to disease. Thus far, Kampachi have been cultured from wild broodstock without any genetic manipulation or improvement. Collaborating with the genetics team at Center for Aquaculture Technologies, Kampachi Farms now proposes to utilize genetic marker-assisted selection techniques to develop a strain of fish that are more tolerant of plant-derived proteins and their associated antinutritional factors than the “wild-genotype” fish currently under culture