The “INNOAQUA – Innovative Approaches for an Integrated Use of Algae in Sustainable Aquaculture Practices and High – Value Food Applications”  project plans to pave the path towards the upcoming sustainable and diversified European in-land aquaculture industry. Mostly by means of leaning on the demonstration and mainstreaming of innovative algae-based foods and solutions, as well as ecology, circularity and digitalization concepts.

Project objectives are as follows:

• to implement an ecosystem approach for sustainable management of aquaculture production;
• to demonstrate tools limiting the waste in aquaculture cultivation and processing;
• to showcase processing methods to obtain new innovative (algae-based) seafood products;
• to enhance the societal acceptance and market penetration of innovative seafood products through novel social simulation approaches;
• to maximize wider uptake of INNOAQUA´s results during and after the project´s execution.

Project activities

The INNOAQUA initiative will focus on the following tasks:

1. addressing main barriers hindering the growth of the sector;
2. at a pre-commercial level, demonstrating the operational, technical, and socio-economic robustness of digitally enhanced integrated fish and algae RAS – IMTA cultivation systems,
3. piloting the optimized processing techniques following biorefinery principles,
4. formulating high added value seafood products.

Moreover, the INNOAQUA will also work on:

1. understanding how consumer perceptions and social norms influence the consumption of innovative seafood products;
2. co-creating the products together with end- users,
3. simulating their uptake in digital models of communities to identify effective market deployment and penetration strategies.

The project is funded by the European Commission under the European Research Executive Agency. The coordinator of INNOAQUA is NORCE – Norwegian Research Centre. The project consortium is comprised of PEDAL Consulting and 16 partners from Norway, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Belgium and Brazil.