2020 Annual Meeting

On Tuesday, July 21, 2020, the annual meeting was held between the partners of the EPAlTH project entitled "Development of an Innovative Method of Genetic Selection of Fish with the aim of more effective feed conversion" with KOD. PRAXIS/MIS (OPS) : 5010669. The meeting took place at the base of the Project Coordinator, at the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly in Larissa. The collaborating institutions, "Laboratory of Genetics, Comparative and Evolutionary Biology (BIOZ)" of the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly, the company "NIREAS SA" and the "Laboratory of Agricultural Biotechnology and Control of Agricultural Products" of the Department of Agriculture of the International University of Greece presented the progress of the project work, the results so far and exchanged views on managing the delays caused by the protection measures against the Covid-19 pandemic in the development of the work packages of the project.

The Nireas SA team presented and highlighted the data obtained from PE1 and more specifically from the bream breeding in controlled conditions with the aim of accurately calculating the convertibility of food for each family. Despite the difficulties imposed by the pandemic, PE1 was successfully completed!

The remaining PEs are ongoing. In the context of PE2, the team of the "Agrobiotechnology and Control of Agricultural Products" Laboratory presented the development of the methodology for the selection of candidate breeders using zootechnical indicators as well as their proposal for the list of the selected breeders. The VIOZ Laboratory of the University of Thessaly presented the progress of PE3 and PE4 of the project. In the context of FP3, candidate biochemical markers tested as indicators of food convertibility and nutritional status were presented. Also, the comparative results of whole erythrocyte transcriptome sequencing in different families and different nutritional regime and the genes highlighted through it were presented. In FP4, the richness of polymorphisms in genes of interest, which emerged from next-generation transcriptome and genome sequencing in the program's bream individuals, was analyzed. The aim is to correlate these polymorphisms with the functional polymorphism associated with feed conversion.

Overall, it was found that despite the adversities, the project did not deviate from its course and has already produced interesting results which are expected to multiply in the coming period.