Bioeconomy in the North -ForestFeed - A Nordic blue-green value chain from forest to fish filet

ForestFeed will develop sustainable high-quality microbial feed ingredients (MI; mycoprotein) for farmed salmonids by up-cycling forestry waste streams by advanced biotechnology, thus facilitating a circular economy, strengthening food security and mitigating climate change. The project includes partners with complementary expertise along the value chain from primary forestry by-products to the final fish products. The MI and derived products will be used in functional feeds to improve immunological function, health, disease resistance and welfare of fish. The locally produced MI will also reduce the environmental impact of the aquaculture industry, benefiting productivity, costs and consumer confidence in the final fish products. Novel bioprocessing technologies will be developed to exploit side streams from forest biomass processing as a sustainable feedstock to produce the MI. Most promising processes and feedstock will be used to upscale MI production. Novel bioactive products will be isolated from the MI, characterized, and evaluated for bioactivity in salmon immune cell culture studies, where the most promising products will be used in functional feeds. Nutritional value, growth performance and health effects of the MI and MI products will be validated in trials with rainbow trout and Atlantic salmon with state-of-the-art tools (gut physiology, histopathology, transcriptomics and proteomics). A risk profile of the process and feedstocks will be developed, and environmental life cycle assessment (E-LCA), life cycle costing (LCC) assessment of the optimized aquaculture system, and techno-economic analysis of the process will be performed. Overall, ForestFeed will create strong novel, interdisciplinary research and innovation groups from Norway, Finland, Sweden, Germany and Canada to facilitate a forest-based bioeconomy and mitigate climate change in the Nordic region.

ForestFeed will develop sustainable high-quality microbial feed ingredients (MI; mycoprotein) for farmed salmonids by up-cycling forestry waste streams by advanced biotechnology, thus facilitating a circular economy, strengthening food security and mitigating climate change. The project includes partners with complementary expertise along the value chain from primary forestry by-products to the final fish products. The MI and derived products will be used in functional feeds to improve immunological function, health, disease resistance and welfare of fish. The locally produced MI will also reduce the environmental impact of the aquaculture industry, benefiting productivity, costs and consumer confidence in the final fish products. Novel bioprocessing technologies will be developed to exploit side streams from forest biomass processing as a sustainable feedstock to produce the MI. Most promising processes and feedstock will be used to upscale MI production. Novel bioactive products will be isolated from the MI, characterized, and evaluated for bioactivity in salmon immune cell culture studies, where the most promising products will be used in functional feeds. Nutritional value, growth performance and health effects of the MI and MI products will be validated in trials with rainbow trout and Atlantic salmon with state-of-the-art tools (gut physiology, histopathology, transcriptomics and proteomics). A risk profile of the process and feedstocks will be developed, and environmental life cycle assessment (E-LCA), life cycle costing (LCC) assessment of the optimized aquaculture system, and techno-economic analysis of the process will be performed. Overall, ForestFeed will create strong novel, interdisciplinary research and innovation groups from Norway, Finland, Sweden, Germany and Canada to facilitate a forest-based bioeconomy and mitigate climate change in the Nordic region.