Environmental DNA for low-cost monitoring of disease in Salmonid aquaculture

Start date: 1 October 2018

Salmonid aquaculture in the UK is an important contributor to the economy, with salmon as the UK’s second largest food export valued at £409 million in 2017, and with considerable expansions planned over the next five years. These activities are underpinned by good practices promoting fish welfare. In marine finfish aquaculture, the most significant threats are posed by plankton-borne pathogens such as sea lice, amoebic gill disease, and harmful phyto- and zooplankton blooms. Because surveillance and detection of these pathogens traditionally relies on time-consuming manual sampling and count data, a low-cost early warning system has long been considered desirable. As such, you will aim to design a system for detecting plankton-borne threats to salmonid aquaculture based on environmental DNA (eDNA) shed by species of interest.