At the beginning of the event, INESC TEC and CIIMAR presented a strategic overview  of aquaculture in R&D institutions. After that, the Secretary General of the Portuguese Aquaculture Association (APA), Fernando Gonçalves, spoke of the national aquaculture sector and its potential.

Four themes were addressed throughout the day: the production of oysters, the nutrition and production of fish, technology to monitor aquaculture, processing and transformation. The opportunities and some (new) funding mechanisms available in this sector have also been discussed in a roundtable, which included funding mechanism agents, representatives of associations and companies in the sector, as well as representatives of the national science and technology system.

In 2014, the aquaculture sector produced about 12 thousand tonnes. With the new licences, it will be possible to increase the production capacity to 40 thousand tonnes over the next years – this depends on the implementation and productivity of the installations.

“There is a growing and positive interest around aquaculture, but we need to continue building trust and promoting the interaction between the partners that are directly and indirectly related to aquaculture so that we can improve the productivity  and competitiveness of the entire value chain”, states Carlos Pinho, researcher and the person in charge of the aquaculture field at INESC TEC.

The INESC TEC researchers mentioned in this article are associated with the following partner institutions: INESC TEC.

INESC TEC, june 2015