The UK Aquaculture Initiative, a joint research council initiative, brings together the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBRSC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to develop a pre-competitive funding initiative to provide new solutions for sustainable aquaculture. The initiative supports innovative research, research translation and the provision of training, focussing on increasing aquaculture capacity in the BBSRC and NERC research communities. It aims to ensure the UK aquaculture sector receives benefit from innovation arising from the research base, by funding projects that incorporate both the environmental and biological sciences to deliver innovative approaches to solving industry problems. More information on the UK Aquaculture Initiative can be found in here. The goal is to create strategic investment through the Initiative to support research and translation of outputs in aquaculture, which could be picked up by the levy bodies, SARF, SAIC and Innovate UK, which invest in near-market and industry-led R&D.
Despite being one of the UK’s strategic food production sectors, helping underpin sustainable economic growth, aquaculture funding has dropped considerably from 2009 to 2014 in disproportion to the growing weight of the sector. An analysis of the portfolio in 2012 showed NERC’s research investments have been modest since 2003 and BBSRC’s investment in aquaculture was down to under £1M in 2012/13.
A 2013 stakeholder consultation conducted by BBSRC (Glasgow, September 2013, Healthy and Sustainable Aquatic Supply chain - Biosciences KTN meeting), with 60 academics and business, was conducted to identify the extent of the research gap, whether the community had capacity to respond to it and how the Council support could be useful. The consultation identified the gaps in research funding of diseases, vaccines, microalgae, shellfish and environmental research. Consultees further identified as issues funding and support, communication, awareness of progress in other areas, interest and timing. The full results of this consultation can be found in here.
These results prompted the Initiative, from a need to boost UK aquaculture funding and in recognition of the importance and interest of the sector, with BBSRC-NERC acting to turn around the declining investment made by Research Councils in recent years. The Initiative started in 2014 and was divided in two phases.
Started in 2014, with another stakeholder consultation workshop (Birmingham, March 2014) to define priority areas identify and prioritise research gaps in aquaculture, promote collaboration, discuss novel technologies and facilitate research partnerships. The nearly 100 attendees, from 64 institutions, identified 30 research and expertise gaps and agreed that the topics had considerable overlap, so holistic and multidisciplinary approaches were required. The full workshop report and delegate list can be found in here.
The outputs of the workshop were used to help develop a joint BBSRC-NERC Capacity-Building Research Call (September 2014; £6M). It called for multidisciplinary proposals in “Sustainable Aquaculture: Health, disease and the environment”, covering mechanisms of disease, biology of health and disease resistance, immunology of infection and protection, tools and methods, prediction of weather and climate-related hazards, interactions between wild and farmed fish, and environmental capacity for aquaculture. This call funded 21 projects and a breakdown of funded research can be consulted in here, pages 12-13. The list of funded projects and respective principal investigators can be found in here, Annex 2.
Further to this, in 2014 BBSRC partnered with Economic and Social Science Research Council (ESRC), the Department for International Development (DfID) and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT-India) to launch a Global Research Partnership Aquaculture Call. The programme funded research aimed at developing aquaculture for food security, development and poverty reduction in developing countries. This call formed part of BBSRC’s international Newton Fund activities.
In 2014, BBSRC, NERC and Sainsbury also funded a Sustainable Aquatic Food Supply Knowledge Exchange Fellowship (2014, £130K) to work in the aquatic food business sector. This fellowship was awarded to Dr Karen Alexander, Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), and developed from October 2013 to January 2016. It aimed at mapping UK academic expertise; outlining current research activity focussing on Sainsbury’s priority areas; investigating industry research challenges in the aquatic food supply chain and assisting BBSRC and NERC in the development of a Sustainable Aquaculture Industry initiative, and; develop ‘Passports to Research’ to provide industry and other organisations with an overview detailing what research has been done, what the gaps and opportunities are, and what needs to happen to deliver in a commercial context. A summary of the fellowship can be found here. Details of these two calls can be found in here, Annex 1.
Started in 2015, with the Sustainable Aquaculture Industry workshop (Edinburgh, March 2015), focused on identifying research and research translation priorities for industry, and to explore the benefits and barriers to collaboration between industry and academia, and suitable delivery mechanisms for research council funding. The consultees identified as target areas fish and shellfish welfare, health and disease, sustainable feedstocks, aquaculture and the environment, stock improvement, product quality, risk prediction and capacity increase (report here). Furthermore, industry representatives also raised concerns relating to legislation, regulation, consumer expectations and spatial planning issues, which are within ESRC’s remit.
This consultation was followed by the launch of an Innovation Projects Call (April 2016, £1.2M; details here), targeting innovation projects that utilise the wealth of existing research, data and expertise to enable the development of technologies and solutions for the benefit of practitioners and decision-makers.
Delegates, of the March 2015 consultation, were also asked to consider what the benefits and barriers of business collaborating with academia were. Results of this consultation can be found in here, Annex 3. Delegates acknowledged as barriers the difficulty in identifying collaborators, small R&D budgets in industry, the burden of finding match-funding for company partners, intellectual property management, and timing and administrative issues with funding calls. To tackle these, BBSRC and NERC will continue to work with the sector in developing a funding mechanism suitable for the UK aquaculture, with some examples of possible mechanism illustrated in here, pages 14-17. Accordingly, BBSRC-NERC has convened a working group (of key industry and academics, interested co-funders) to help develop the shape and scope of the Initiative, by proposing options of thematic areas and funding mechanisms most suitable to the sector. To support networking within the UK aquaculture sector, BBSRC-NERC conducted a workshop on Unlocking Aquaculture Innovation through Collaboration (London, December 2015; details here), to build relationships between different parts of the growing aquaculture research community.
To further tackled these issues and help shape the UK Aquaculture Initiative, BBSRC-NERC launched two other calls, for an UK Aquaculture Network and an Aquaculture Knowledge Exchange Fellowship.
The UK Aquaculture Network call (March, 2016, £600k) aimed at build an interdisciplinary network to build community and develop research strategy in the UK aquaculture research base, enabling links to industry and other sector stakeholders. This was preceded by a workshop (Glasgow, April 2016) to build consortia for network proposals, which gathered over 30 academics to discuss the organisation and function of the network. The successful network, ARCH-UK or Aquaculture Research Collaborative hub, led by Prof Brendan McAndrew (PI, Stirling University) Prof Andrew Rowley (PI, Swansea University), Prof Sam Martin (Co-I; University of Aberdeen), and Prof Charles Tyler (Co-I, University of Exeter), and runs from February 2017 to February 2021. This academic-led open network brings together academic, industry, governmental and regulatory stakeholder, with both 8 working groups, has defined a structured process for the identification and delivery of a strategic research agenda and inform future funding within the UK Aquaculture Initiative. This has resulted in a report on UK aquaculture research priorities delivered to BBSRC-NERC in 2017. The network will further work to improve community interactions and provide input to aquaculture policy. It aims to connect the UK aquaculture community through sign-posting research council funding, developing skills and facilitating collaboration. The network is coordinated by Joanna Gosling, and has a website and twitter.
The Aquaculture Knowledge Exchange Fellowship call (March 2016, £200k; details here), awarded to Dr Sofia C. Franco, Newcastle University. Besides collaborating with the management hub of the network (from September 2016 to August 2019), Dr Franco is developing a parallel knowledge exchange programme focused in supporting KE and collaboration opportunities between industry and academia, from which this website and activities show derive. You can follow the updates of this KE programme on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
A BBSRC/NERC Joint Call in Aquaculture: Collaborative Research and Innovation was launched in November 2017 and closed January 2018 (details here), following the report from ARCH-UK. This focused on multidisciplinary research challenges in the aquaculture sector, with approximately £4.4 million is available for projects addressing key challenges in the aquaculture sector, namely: (i) consortia grants, funding up to 3 grants, for 3 years at a maximum of £1.2m; and (ii) innovation grants, funding 7-10 projects, for 12-24 months at a maximum of £200k. This call was supported by a launch workshop (details here) for information and Q&A around the funding call and to provide opportunities for networking and consortia building. Results are expected in April 2018, with funded projects due to start in October 2018.
If you are interested in discussing the UK Aquaculture Initiative and how you might participate, please contact the programme development team:
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research CouncilCharis Cook – Innovation Manager01793 413221 Charis.Cook@bbsrc.ac.uk Natural Environment Research Council Jodie Mitchell – Knowledge & Innovation Manager01793 418004 jodark@nerc.ac.uk