ROBUST-SMOLT Impact of Early Life History in Freshwater Recirculation Aquaculture Systems on A. Salmon Robustness and Susceptibility to Disease at Sea

The project aims to characterise the impacts of freshwater environmental conditions (RAS vs. freshwater loch systems) (water, temperature, light, nutrition) on post-smolt performances and robustness at sea. The main hypothesis tested by the project is that early life history of salmon produced in freshwater RAS impacts on microbiomes, immune barriers and robustness at sea especially for complex gill pathologies, and that this is due to “manipulated” environmental conditions in RAS especially water chemistry and microbiology, nutrition and photothermal manipulations.