Facilitating detection, understanding production, and improving mitigation of undesired taste and odour compounds in aquaculture - FLAVOUR (ended project)

The overall aim of the FLAVOUR project is to detect, prevent and remove off-flavour and undesired odour in fish farmed in Recirculated Aquaculture Systems (RAS). Off-flavour compounds, such as geosmin, are produced by microorganisms and give the fish an unpalatable taste, even at very low concentrations. Today, the main strategy for remedying this problem is to depurate the fish in large quantities of clean water. The fish lose a significant amount of weight during this period, affecting the production efficiency in addition to the environmental effect of excessive water use.

FLAVOUR addresses the problem with off-flavour by combining fundamental research on why the compounds are produced with development of new technology for monitoring and removal. The project has three objectives:

• Determine which microorganisms produce off-flavour compounds and how this is affected by environmental factors.
• Develop novel technology for monitoring geosmin levels in water
• Explore bioelectrochemical systems for minimizing production of and removing off-flavour compounds from the water.

Funding is provided by Nordforsk via the national funding agencies FORMAS (Sweden), Innovation Fund (Denmark), and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (Finland).

Chalmers University of Technology - Water Environment Technology