© KAUST
At the opening plenary, Carlos M Duarte, a professor at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, will focus on how regenerative aquaculture – which he defines as any aquaculture practice that increases economic, social, cultural and natural capital – is essential to fast-track progress towards achieving sustainable development goals.
Along with his role at KAUST, Duarte is executive director of the Global Coral R&D Accelerator Platform (CORDAP.org) and chief executive of the CORDAP Foundation. Before this he was research professor with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and director of the Oceans Institute at The University of Western Australia. He also holds an honorary professor position at the Arctic Research Centre in Aarhus University, Denmark.
His research focuses on understanding the effects of global change in marine ecosystems and developing nature-based solutions to global challenges, including climate change.
Geneticists and gastronomes
Dr Elisabetta Giuffra, a director at French research institute INRAE, will deliver the plenary speech on the second day of the event. As co-leader of the international Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes (FAANG) initiative, she will speak about the value of functional genome annotations and refined phenotypes.
Meanwhile Joan Riera, from the consumer behaviour specialist Kantar Worldpanel, is set to deliver the third plenary presentation, on 25 September, which is set to explore why seafood consumption in the EU is declining.
Indeed, the latest Eurobarometer report from the European Commission reveals that only 29 percent of Europeans consume fishery and aquaculture products at least once a week at home. However, Spain remains an exception to this trend, leading the EU in seafood consumption.
Riera will run through the recent consumption data from Spain and compare this with several other EU countries. He will give his insights into Spanish consumer trends and patterns for the main seafood products coming from both fisheries and aquaculture.
