Swiss EPFC-CG workshop report

In beautiful Bern the Core Group members of EPFC had a meeting. First to evaluate the past 3 years of EPFC-CG and look forward to the coming 3 years. All present members could give their input on future EPFC-CG activities. Secundly, we learned, discussed and thought about selective breeding in percid fish and what could be the function of EPFC-CG in this.

With 28 people inscribed, 19 out of 28 members present our meeting was successful. Two production sides were visited: Tropenhaus Frutigen and Swiffish. Both companies gave us an overwhelming amount of information and no question was to much.  

Fifteenth of March we had a meeting with a beautiful view on the soccer stadium of the Young Boys Football team of Bern. The first 3 years of EPFC-CG were not easy due to corona, live workshops were replaced by webinars or simply needed to be cancelled. This of course gives the Core Group organization extra positive pressure to organize a lot of activities in the next 3 years, some ideas:  

  • Reproduction workshop at Inagro (10-14 October 2022). 
  • Nutrition workshop in Poland. 
  • Sperm cryopreservation workshop. 
  • Artemia/ first feeding of larvae workshop. 
  • Again each first day of the EAS congress an EPFC workshop open to everyone. 
  • Student grands to do a research and working internship in a commercial farm. 
  • Webinars on several topics: e.g., “Rhabdovirus in percid fish”.   

Sixteenth March we had the privilege to get an overview of advantages, pitfalls and methodologies of current selective breeding programs in aquaculture by Thomas Lecocq from the University of Lorraine. Each company could take the floor afterwards and explain his working method in and idea on broodstock management. After interesting discussions on common garden experiments, broodstock size, selecting breeders and so on, we had a nice dinner at the Bern University of Applied Science (BFH) our host during this Swiss workshop. 

Seventeenth March Emmanouil Diakos from the University of Lorraine spoke about a possible better way to design domestication programs: the multi-function selective breeding program. Today this is tested on the zebrafish but Thomas and Emmanouil hope it will be possible to use it with percid fish in a, yet to write, next project. 

Eighteenth we all said goodbye and went back to the business as usual: working with percid fish. 

published 25 May 2022