A Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda for EU aquaculture.

EATiP operates to an agreed strategic research and innovation agenda, developed in consultation with the platform membership and put out to consultation across a wide range of stakeholders including from across the industry value chain, academia, research centres, NGOs, civil society groups and other associations.

EATiP are identifying and prioritising six areas within the SRIA in order support the ambitions of the EU Mission Ocean. Specifically, we seek to identify and communicate with the relevant authorities and stakeholders over such bottlenecks and research gaps that exist as to prevent or limit key Mission Ocean objectives. This extends across the Mission but has particular relevance in supporting the development of zero carbon and low impact aquaculture and the promotion of circular, low carbon use of marine and water space.

Research and innovation prioritisation will be focussed on:
1: Low Trophic Aquaculture: including development of shellfish & algae aquaculture, work towards zero input aquaculture & considerations on the definitions of low trophic production.

2: Smart / Precious Farming - including in the application of technology, big data and AI, & consideration of open access data sources for aquaculture - DTO, Copernicus, EMODnet etc.

3: Project Call Design - focussing on aspects of commercialisation and innovation transfer within EU funded projects, specifically engaging Micro & SME APBs alongside clusters and ETP Mirror Platforms, and making use of tools such as Smart Specialisation and regional innovation transfer.

4: Sustainability Frameworks and Facilitation - including methodologies for considering sustainability (LCA, PEF) and standards for best practice. This will impact on supporting and measuring impact of policy aspirations including in relation to zero carbon, organic production, AMR & circular bio economy.

5: Capacity Building - focusing on the areas of Education, Blue Skills and Blue Careers both for aquaculture and within the wider context of the blue economy and encompassing youth engagement, citizen science and ocean literacy.

6: International Collaboration - supporting regional and international collaboration using multi stakeholder methodologies for innovation and best practice transfer and alignment of Mission objectives with international actions (e.g. all Atlantic collaboration) and food systems approaches.

EATiP is registered in Belgium but the identification and prioritisation of actions will be undertaken across Europe with outputs used to engage with policy makers at the MS, EU and international level.

Actions will be undertaken both directly by the EATiP platform but supported through the membership, where time and contributions are significant and provided "in kind".

Research gaps, bottleneck and challenges to innovation transfer will be considered across all sectors, species and production methodologies. The six areas identified will be reviewed on an annual basis in relation to the performance of the Mission and challenges / feedback being experienced by projects and research activities being undertaken through Horizon Europe, Mission Ocean and elsewhere.

EATiP actions will also seek to support the delivery of key European communications on the Blue Economy, Algae Sector and regarding strategic guidelines for European aquaculture, informing on the work of the Aquaculture Assistance Mechanism & EC knowledge base.