Aquaculture for all

Weekly Overview: New Virus Threatening Tilapia Stocks Discovered

Health Sustainability Economics +2 more

ANALYSIS - An international team of researchers have identified and characterised a new virus - tilapia lake virus (TiLV), which caused huge mortality of farmed tilapia in Israel and Ecuador.

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The scientific team, led by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Tel Aviv University, used high-throughput sequencing to determine the genetic code of the virus from tissue taken from diseased fish. However, the resulting DNA sequences didn't match any known virus.

"The TiLV sequence has only minimal similarity in a small region of its genome to other viruses; thus, the methods we typically use to identify and characterise viruses through sequencing alone were insufficient," says first author Eran Bacharach, a molecular virologist at Tel Aviv University.

"It appears to be most closely related to a family of influenza viruses called orthomyxoviruses; however, we still don't understand much about its biology," adds Nischay Mishra, associate research scientist at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia's Mailman School.

In other news, salmon farmers around the world using sea lice treatments containing azamethiphos will now be able to export their fish to the US thanks to years of hard work by Fish Vet Group (FVG).

Fish Vet Group has worked closely with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for many years to obtain the Import Tolerance for azamethiphos, the active ingredient in Benchmark’s sea lice treatments, Salmosan®, Salmosan®Vet and Byelice®.

Aquaculture UK Update

On 25 - 26 May 2016, 5m Publishing and TheFishSite are hosting Aquaculture UK, the UK's largest aquaculture exhibition and conference.

  • Over 130 exhibitors confirmed
  • Meet with industry leaders
  • Visitors expected from over 30 countries
  • After dinner speaker confirmed for Gala Dinner
  • Two-day seminar programme
  • Live poll on industry matters
  • Floor plan now available
  • Free visitor registration

Importance of Education in Aquaculture

The importance of education in aquaculture is one of the key topics being discussed this year at Aquaculture UK.

Nigel Balmforth, Head of Publishing at 5m Publishing, will chair the session entitled ‘The Importance of Education and Training in Aquaculture’.

This session will cover distance learning, aquaculture publishing and the role of accreditation and certification in aquaculture training.

During the two day conference there will also be seminars on fish health, biosecurity, certification, feed and aquaculture production technologies, to name a few.

For a preview of the full two-day seminar programme, sign up to the Sustainable Aquaculture Magazine here.

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