European technology development for a reliable supply of high quality seed in blue mussel farming

From 2005-2007 the EU project BLUE SEED was carried out. The objectives were to secure a reliable supply of blue mussel seed and to develop techniques allowing farmers tomarket bluemussels year round. A problem blue mussel producers face is the unpredictability seed supply. The amounts of wild seed available are extremely variable fromyear to year.Areliable supply of seed from hatchery sources will allow mussel farmers to overcome this. A second problem is that recently spawned mussels cannot be sold due to insufficient meat content. Producerswill benefit greatly from a hatchery-based technique, such as triploid induction, that produces non-maturing mussels that can be marketed year round. In this project mussel farmers and sellers, a network for training and technology transfer, universities and research institutes collaborated. Attention was given to broodstock conditioning and larval rearing, production of triploid larvae and tetraploid broodstock, spat settlement and on rearing of diploid and triploid spat to seed size. In addition, the allowed costs of hatchery produced seed with conventional wild-caught seed is compared. Considering the normal 2 to 3 year production cycle for blue mussel in Europe, the focus of this 2-year project was on spat and seed production.