Salmon farming is connected to many risk and challenges. However, these differ depending on the system and the geographical location of the farm.
Our breeding programs are adapted to meet our customers’ expectations. This means that the families are continuously tested in challenging commercial conditions, even though their siblings and the breeding candidates used for the egg production are kept on land in a closed system. This means that our customers, using open net-pens, can be confident that the eggs they receive have potential for fast growth and survival in the oceans’ challenging conditions.
The product concepts SalmoProtect and SalmoSelect are targeted for sea-farming, with genetic traits for improved resistance to sea-lice and several disease traits.
During the last decade the successful introduction of Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) technology has opened up new opportunities for how and where the future production of salmon will be. From a breeding company’s perspective, a key factor is to ensure that the genetic potential keeps up with the developments of new technology and does not become a showstopper for success.
Benchmark Genetics follows these developments closely, engaging in R&D projects with academic partners such as The Conservation Fund Freshwater Institute (TCFFI) and The Marine Institute of Norway to understand the biological aspects of land-based farming from a genetics perspective.
Benchmark’sBenchmark’s StofnFiskur has the most extensive experience in the industry of land-based broodstock farming, starting in 1991. Today, we are proud to be the number one supplier of ova to the land-based farming industry worldwide.
The advantages of land production are highly controlled production systems, improved growth, no sea-lice issues, and high biosecurity levels. This means that the number of genetic traits required for the ova products is fewer. Our product concept SalmoRAS4+ has been tailored to focus on high growth and physical quality traits. Putting higher pressure on these specific traits, we can obtain significantly higher gains per generation, to benefit land-based farming operations.
Read more about our concept for land-based farming in our brochure
