Under a collaborative partnership between Yukon College, Cold Climate Innovation (CCI) and Icywaters Limited (IWL), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) awarded an Applied Research and Development grant (ARD) for a research project to investigate the production of silage from arctic charr waste products.
Fish processing creates waste products that are often sent to landfill: squandering nutrients, negatively impacting the environment and resulting in disposal costs. With the addition of certain acids or through fermentation with lactic acid bacteria, liquefied fish waste can easily and economically be converted into functional fish silage. This can be used as an agricultural feed protein supplement, improving milk yield and milk protein content, improve body weight gain in young animals, and increase levels of omega-3 fatty acids in subcutaneous fat. It has also been deemed appropriate for use in a balanced fish diet and as a fertilizer for crops, whilst oil extracted through centrifugation can be used in nutritional supplements.
This project took liquefied arctic charr slurry of gut materials from a commercial aquaculture facility and through addition of acid produced fish silage. The priamry goal was to determine if this silage had the potential to be used as an agricultural supplement. Through laboratory analysis the nutritional content of the arctic charr silage was assessed: determining total protein and lipid content and confirming the levels of EPA and DHA acids.
Results:
The quality tests for the silage can be found here.
- Project Innovation Officer, Cold Climate Innovation
- Jonathan Lucas, VP Aquaculture, Icywaters Ltd.
- Justin Golebeski, Research Student, Yukon College