May saw the final experimental trials for HoloFood successfully complete
Designing and executing a large scale hologenomic animal trial during a pandemic has been a challenge. Already pushed back by a year we were very pleased that the trial could go ahead this year with only minor modifications in the design.
Like all previous trials we had started to plan for this one many months ago, from preparing the sustainable blue mussel feed additive, to designing the correct sampling protocol there were many steps that took place before the salmon even arrived into the experimental facilities.
Teams from Lerøy, IMR and NTNU that were thankfully able to travel to the experimental facilities on the island of Dønna in Norway. Getting out of the daily routine and travelling was a very welcome mission for the teams, especially for those who have been semi-confined to their home-office for the past year!
Meanwhile our partners in UCPH prepared and shipped all necessary sampling equipment to Norway with enough time to counter for current transport delays.
As usual teams were split up into sampling stations and everything went according to plan. As summer was almost around the corner we had plenty of daylight after the sampling shifts were over, giving us time for some much needed fresh air and enjoyment of the surroundings.
The samples have now been shipped to the laboratories tasked with doing the final stages of the analysis, from metabolomics in Aarhus University in Denmark, Key Perfomance Indexes at IMR in Norway and the final -omics data generation in UCPH, Denmark. Once all these datasets have been generated an analysed then researchers and industry partners leading the salmon project will come together to piece the information together and compare these results to the previous two trials for a full holo-omic framework to be analysed. Stay tuned for more updates!
