Organización de la vida: de los genes a los biomas

Ensuring sustainability in fish farming industries and establishing a sustainable use of fisheries provide our society with an enormous potential to achieve a healthy and balanced nutrition for all.

However, the limitations in the availability of these resources call for a more efficient exploitation, reducing global food losses and adding value to certain industry byproducts, currently considered food waste.

On the one hand, fisheries discards, that is, non-target catches, constitute a substantial waste of resources that threatens the sustainable exploitation and economic viability of fisheries. On the other, the seafood processing industry produces many byproducts such as proteins, enzymes, fatty acids and biopolymers, which are often disposed of despite their potential for biotechnological, nutritional, pharmaceutical, and biomedical applications.

Our research along this line intends to add value to these currently wasted resources. We design and optimize eco-innovative processes and technologies to manage and valorize fishery discards and food processing industry byproducts and effluents. By doing this, we are able to obtain ingredients for aquafeed and human consumption, along with other medium-high added-value compounds of interest for the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.