Microalgae Microbiomes — A natural source for the prevention
and treatment of aquaculture diseases

Welcome to the AquaHealth project

Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing food sectors in the world.
In order to guarantee continuous, efficient and sustainable production and to safeguard the growth of this important sector, its protection from biological threats is crucial.
Within the AquaHealth project, an international consortium of highly experienced partners will assemble and apply an advanced ‘omics toolbox on the natural synergy of microalgae and microbial consortia to discover and validate novel bioactive and prebiotic compounds for sustainable use in preventing and treating disease in land-based aquaculture systems. Targeted classes include biofilm and microbial pathogens inhibiting enzymes, peptides and small molecules, as well as antiviral natural products such as reverse-transcriptase inhibitors.

Microalgae are a promising source for our future energy and raw material supply, Photo: TUHH

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Our approach

The AquaHealth project will deliver fundamental new insight into microalgae and their associated microbiomes. Integrated ‘omics approaches will be applied and further, sequence- and function-based screening in search for new bioactive and prebiotic candidate molecules as well as means of their scalable production.
The cultivation process for selected strains and consortia producing promising targets of interests will be scaled up to pilot scale and appropriate downstream processing developed and applied in order to obtain the valuable candidates for detailed characterization. Economic, environmental and social impacts of novel product candidates will be assessed, as well as routes towards commercialization of identified biomolecules and technologies.
Overall, the AquaHealth project will contribute significantly to a positive development of sustainable land-based aquaculture, securing high quality food supply for world’s growing population while simultaneously reducing environmental impact.

The project partners

We, the AquaHealth consortium, are six institutions from ERA-BlueBio participating countries Denmark, Germany, and Norway and will combine our knowledge, experience, and infrastructure in several research fields to achieve our project objectives.

Microalgae

are a promising source for our future energy and raw material supply

Multicultivator

for cultivation experiments

in laboratory scale

Tubular photobioreactor

in Hamburg Reitbrook
for the outdoor cultivation of microalgae

Open Raceway Pond

in Hamburg Reitbrook

Tubular systems

at Sea & Sun Technology

for indoor cultivation of microalgae

Funded by BlueBio Cofund

The AquaHealth project is funded by the ERA-Net BlueBio Cofund on the Blue Bioeconomy, whose goal is to identify new bio-based products, improve existing ways of bringing bio-based products to the market and find new methods to increase value from blue bioeconomy. The Cofund is represented by the national funding organizations, for this project the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Research Council of Norway (RCN), Innovation Fund Denmark (IFD).

Contact

Stay aware of the latest information on the AquaHealth Project in Hamburg. If you have any particular questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.

9 + 6 =

Hamburg University of Technology
Institute of Environmental Technology and Energy Economics
Blohmstrasse 15
D-21079 Hamburg

www.tuhh.de/iue
aquahealth@tuhh.de