Norwegian assistance to Canadian and Chilean fish breeders
With new regulations coming to Chile and existing regulations in Canada, the importation of selected genetic material from countries like Norway is becoming almost impossible, as there are no Norwegian facilities that can provide the documentation of disease-free status of its brood stock according to the rules of these regulations. So even though many Norwegian stocks of farmed salmon are considered to be better when it comes to selected traits like growth, disease resistance and late maturation, Canada and Chile will have to rely on their already imported stocks of Atlantic salmon for their breeding programs.
This makes it even more important to have a reliable method of freezing milt from high-performing males for use in future generations. The technology of cryopreservation of sperm has been used in many forms of livestock production for years, but when it comes to using frozen milt in aquaculture, the results have been mixed.
A new company in Norway has developed new methods of freezing milt from Atlantic and other salmon species that not only shows impressive fertilization rates that are equal to those seen using fresh milt, but that also can store much higher volumes of sperm in new containers called “square-packs”. The company’s Managing Director, Jørn Ulheim- who used to work for the Norwegian salmon breeder AquaGen- recently announced that Cryogenetics AS is setting up shop in both Canada and Chile;
As part of efforts to offer integrated fish farming companies and egg producers access to an effective technology for the freezing of milt, Cryogenetics AS is establishing subsidiaries in British Columbia, Canada and Chile. In addition to the unit in Trondheim, which freezes milt from Scotland and Norway, Cryogenetics is now able to offer freezing and storage in Canada and Chile. Cryogenetics AS’s expectation is that freezing of milt is an increasingly cost-effective technology for the aquaculture industry. Especially for the development in Chile, where it is planned that all egg production will occur in land-based systems and which results in the nearly doubling of production cost per egg. This makes the use of freezing technology interesting in order to make effective use of the potential that male salmon have. The Chilean salmon breeding facilities are now being rebuilt in order to produce eggs during most of the year in order to replace the volume that was previously imported. Here will also Cryogenetics’s technology contribute so that the quality of "off-season" production is kept high.
