Open Workshop:Bottlenecks in diagnostics of Mediterranean fish diseases
9 September 2019Alfandenga do Porto Congress Centre (Portugal) – 19th EAFP Conference
The goal of two EU funded projects in the frame of Horizon 2020, namely MedAID and PerformFISH, is to increase the overall competitiveness and sustainability of the Mediterranean marine fish-farming sector, throughout the whole value chain. An important aspect of both projects is managing transmissible diseases of farmed fish. Another H2020 project ParaFishControl, aiming to improve understanding of fish-parasite interaction and developing innovative solutions and tools for the prevention, control and mitigation of farmed fish parasitic diseases, interacts with these two projects in the field of the parasitic diseases. The projects are actively cooperating in all possible aspects and the workshop will cover one of the mutual interests of three EU H2020 projects: diagnostics. PerformFISH is working on a deliverable on diagnostic methods and MedAID and ParaFishControl have prepared Diagnostic Manuals for certain diseases. Still, further efforts for the validation of diagnostic methods of infectious diseases in Mediterranean aquaculture are needed. In addition, harmonization of recommended procedures is necessary for the generation of meaningful field data at all levels, and the scope of diagnostic manuals is to standardize these procedures as much as possible.