Monday February 7th, 12pm CET

Leila BASTI^1*, Satoshi NAGAI², Kyohito NAGAI³

Food Security and Harmful Dinophyte Blooms: Impacts on Aquaculture and Recent Advances in Biosensors and Molecular Detection

¹ Department of Ocean Science, Faculty of Marine Environment and Resources, Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, Tokyo, Japan
² Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency, National Research Institute of Fisheries Science, Yokohama, Japan
³ Pearl Research Laboratory, K. Mikimoto & Co. LtD., Mie, Japan
^* bastileila@gmail.com

Aquaculture is expected to expand globally in response to a surge in the demand for a new source of protein as conventional agriculture systems are declining, especially in regions seeing a significant growth of their human populations. Marine and freshwater aquaculture is seen as the most environmentally-friendly food production system that would offer a sustainable alternative to the traditional plant and livestock categories. Numerous natural and engineered environments are seen as suitable for an unlimited opportunity for food production and growth over the coming decades.
However, several constraints including harmful algal blooms (HAB) will hamper the provision of long-term food security. HAB have been increasing globally over the past decades due to many factors, including climate change and increased anthropogenic pressures on freshwater and coastal environments paralleled to increased aquaculture activities. With the recent alarming projections of significant climatic and oceanic shifts driven by climate change, constraints to aquaculture systems need to be addressed in a more urgent way to secure the future of food production. In particular, dinophytes represent the most widespread HAB that have been forming recurrent blooms of devastating impacts on aquaculture farms. In the present seminar, a historical overview of the impacts of harmful dinophytes on aquaculture farms driven from global data is given, as well as the toxic effects of the most recurrent harmful dinophytes on fish and shellfish from experimental studies. The recent advances in the developments of biosensors and molecular detection tools for prediction and biomonitoring of harmful dinophytes are also presented.