Marine Institute Beaufort Award for Marine Biodiscovery Research
This is a seven-year research programme, funded by a Marine Institute award of €7.3 million aimed at the discovery of new drugs and advanced bio-materials from marine animals, plants and microorganisms. An all-island cluster of researchers from the National University of Ireland, Galway, University College Cork, and the Queen’s University Belfast, is engaged in this multidisciplinary project.
NutraMara - National Marine Functional Foods Research Initiative
Co-funded by the Marine Institute and DAMF (€5.2m), NutraMara is defining novel food ingredients and developing value-added functional food products from marine sources. This applied research programme, built on the back of industry inputs, is targeting fish processing rest raw materials, waste streams and under-utilised species of fish and algae and finfish and shellfish aquaculture in search of novel food ingredients.
Eircod
Funded by the Marine Institute (€4.1m), this project provides the scientific basis for a major diversification of existing finfish culture industry while at the same time addressing a known market gap for high quality white fish. Supporting the development of farmed cod stocks by precise selection based on genetic traits is a range of biotechnology tools all of which are being used by the research team.
Marine Institute Beaufort Award for Fish Population Genetics
The Marine Institute has awarded €3.7m to this project to develop a suite of Genetic Stock Identification (GSI) tools to monitor and predict fish population changes resulting from climate change impacts.
ASTOX
Drawing heavily from established biotechnology techniques and processes, this project is providing a scientific basis for rationalising the biotoxin monitoring and risk management systems used in Ireland and the EU, thus supporting the sustainable growth of the shellfish industry while maintaining health and protection for shellfish consumers.
Seaweed Aquaculture
The project is developing industry-scale hatchery and on-growing methodologies for a range of commercially relevant seaweed species. In doing so, the project makes use of various marine biotechnology processes, which will assist in the creation of new business opportunities in seaweed aquaculture.
Other relevant activities
Supported by funds from various national agencies and the European Commission are a number of other marine biotechnology related projects. Many Irish research units are already involved in marine biotechnology related activities.
A list of these units is currently being collated and will be available to download here soon.