OYSTERECOVER

Title: Establishing the scientific base and technical procedures and standards to recover the European flat oyster production through strategies to tackle the main constraint, bonamiosis

Summary: The European flat oyster, has been part of the human diet for many centuries. High mortality episodes and overfishing decimated the populations of Ostrea edulis in Europe through the first half of the 20th century. The spread of two diseases associated with Marteilia refringens and Bonamia ostreae, in the early 1970s and 1980s, drastically reduced European oyster production. Despite new management practices, and intensive repletion programmes, the production of O. edulis has remained low for the last few decades. The recovery of European flat oyster production is seen as an important opportunity for the shellfish industry in Europe.

This project aims to attain a clear competitive advantage for a number of SME-AGs and their members for different reasons:

• Chance to diversify production (risk management);
• High market value of the product;
• Environmental positive effects of fostering aquaculture activities based on native species;
• Biotechnology advances provide tools and procedures for the oyster industry to address problems

This project brings together Shellfish Producer Associations and SMEs in major oyster production countries in Europe, concerned with the above issues. Partners are aware of recent scientific progress in selective breeding programmes for bonamiosis tolerance, and have decided to work together with the common goal of facing the challenge of establishing the scientific and technical base, procedures and standards that allow the recovery of the O. edulis production, through development of strategies to tackle the main constraint, bonamiosis.

To successfully achieve this goal those European Research Centers and Universities which have mainly contributed to scientific progress on O. edulis recovery and selective breeding programmes for bonamiosis resistance, will be hired by the SME-AGs and SMEs involved in this OYSTERECOVER proposal, to carry out the relevant research.

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