AQUASERVE - Institute of Aquaculture and Environmental Safety
AQUASERVE
AQUASERVE
Last modified: 01. July 2024
AQUASERVE
- Title of the Project: Aquaserv – Research Infrastructure Services for Sustainable Aquaculture, Fisheries and the Blue Economy (Grant Number 101131121)
- Start date: 01/04/2024
- End date: 31/03/2029
- Coordinating Organisation: CCMAR - Centro de Ciências do Mar do Algarve, Portugal
- MATE’s budget: 323 817 EUR
MATE's Institute for Aquaculture and Environmental Safety participates in a Horizon Europe TNA project AQUASERVE
The overarching objectives of AQUASERV are to bring together, enhance, integrate and customise RI capacities (including facilities, instruments and expertise) and through the provision of transnational access (on-site or remote) and/or virtual access to significantly further scientific advance and promote and facilitate the implementation of European Common Fisheries Policy, the Farm to Fork Strategy, the Sustainable Blue Economy and the European Green Deal.
AQUASERV will achieve these objectives by offering scientists from academia and business remote and on-site transnational (TA) and virtual (VA) access to an advanced set of European research infrastructures and its nodes related to research and management of marine and freshwater biological resources, food and biotechnology. These include the European Marine Biological Resource Centre ERIC (EMBRC), the Analysis and Experimentation on Ecosystems ERIC, The Aquaculture for Excellence for Aquaculture in Fish (Aquaexcel), and the Infrastructure for Promoting Metrology in Food and Nutrition (METROFOOD), as well as the International Council for Exploration of the Sea, both a service provider and stakeholder. It also includes the Research Infrastructure for Science and Innovation Policy Studies (RISIS) to bring contributions from the social sciences and to bring results nearer to policymakers, ensuring societal impact.
To enhance, integrate, and customise RI capacities, collaboration between partners and new pipelines to meet the project's objectives will be developed during the first three years and made available to users. To ensure these capacities will not be lost, a sustainability work package involving stakeholders will address the project legacy.
To maximise impact, AQUASERV will build a communication network among the partners and develop a dissemination and outreach programme. Furthermore, an advanced training programme will be developed to capture future users and will be updated during the project.
The MATE, as an associated partner, will provide 6 different infrastructures for different research activities at the different sites of the University's Institute of Aquaculture and Environmental Safety (Szarvas, Kaposvár, Keszthely, Gödöllő):
1. MATE RAS: experimental recirculation fish rearing unit (Szarvas);
2. MATE POND: an outdoor unit consisting of 32 experimental earthen ponds and various configurable fish-rearing cages (Szarvas);
3. MATE NUTRI: two systems of recirculation fish rearing units and associated fish feed extruder and feed analysis services (Kaposvár);
4. MATE Danio-Lab: a zebrafish rearing unit with various configurations, including analytical and imaging facilities (Keszthely);
5. MATE GENO-LAB: genomics laboratory with sequencing, PCR and real-time PCR capacity (Keszthely);
6. MATE CBL: cell biology laboratory (Gödöllő).
MATE, as a university led by a public interest trust, is not eligible for support from European direct and indirect funding programmes under the European Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/2506 (15 December 2022) and, therefore, could not conclude a grant contract a Beneficiary. Therefore, after negotiations with the project coordinator, MATE applied for a national fund at NRDIO and was successful in obtaining a grant to implement the RDI activity. Subsequently, MATE joined the consortium as a so-called "associate member" in the framework of a contract amendment with the original scope of the tasks undertaken in the application. The costs of the tasks are covered by the Government's own resources in the form of a non-reimbursable grant of HUF 132 376 389.