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Leading scientist sees post-Brexit opportunities for novel oils
GM breakthrough
ASTUDY in Scotland is to explore the health benefits to salmon of a variety of novel oils- and it could also pave the way for a whole new agricultural sector in Britain. Scientists at the Institute of Aquaculture (IoA) in Stirling announced in December details of the investigation, which will test oils from genetically modified (GM) oilseed crops and microalgae.
A range of alternatives to fish oil have been developed in recent years to provide valuable omega-3 fatty acids in fish feed, and, in turn, boost levels in the human diet to help protect against cardiovascular disease.
The Stirling research, led by Professor Douglas Tocher and Dr Mónica Betancor, will see these novel oils incorporated into salmon feed, with the team monitoring the impact of the new omega-3 sources on the response of the fish to specific disease and parasite challenges.
Dr Betancor said: ‘The omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA are beneficial to human health – but they are in short supply. Fish and seafood – now increasingly supplied by the aquaculture sector – are the major sources of these omega-3 fatty acids.
‘The aquaculture industry also adds these fatty acids to fish diets to increase levels of EPA and DHA in the products, which then benefits the consumer.’
Current practice involves giving farmed fish a feed containing a blend of marine fish oil, sourced from the sea, and vegetable oil.
However, fishmeal and fish oil supplies are also at their sustainable limit and – as they are increasingly replaced by plant and vegetable based alternatives – omega-3 levels in farmed salmon have halved in recent years.
Betancor added: ‘The study will also define the influence of the novel dietary oils on the detailed biochemical and molecular mechanisms underpinning fish health, and assess and validate the potential of these new oils for use in salmon farming.’
The Stirling team are working with fish immunologists at the University of Aberdeen; and the lipidomics group at the University of the Highlands and Islands. The industry is also providing support through BioMar and SAIC (the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre).
Pivotal to the trial is Professor Johnathan Napier of Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire, a long-time collaborator with the Stirling team and, since last year, an honorary professor at the IoA.
Napier has pioneered the cultivation of GM camelina plants that contain the same amounts of long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), as fish oil.
The first field trials, conducted in the UK along with the IoA and BioMar in 2015, proved that GM camelina plants could synthesise fish oil without any negative effects on yield.
Then, in 2018, a full scale year-long trial was launched, effectively in commercial conditions at a fish farm in Scotland, to take salmon fed on GM fish oils up to market size.
That trial was concluded in spring last year and Napier’s colleagues at Stirling are still analysing the results, looking not just at tissue and fatty acid analysis, but conducting detailed molecular studies into gene expression too.
Napier said the results will be well worth the wait and will ‘de-risk’ the oil for people who want to use it in the future – ‘you can point to these studies and see that it’s been tested from when the fish went into the sea loch at 200g all the way up to 4-5kg’.
This year’s trial, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and due to start in the spring with results expected by the end of the year, will be on a smaller scale, in tanks rather than in a sea loch.
‘I think that’s the best way to do it at this stage,’ said Napier. ‘It’s difficult to get enough material, enough of the novel oils from all of the different sources.’
These sources will include microalgae oil from Veramaris, which Napier said ‘is sort of on the market’, and canola plant oil from Nuseed in Australia and Cargill, as well as the camelina oil.
‘The idea is we’ll do a whole panel of oils so, assuming we can get our hands on them, we would be comparing the algal oil with our GM camelina oil, and hopefully against some of the canola oils from Cargill.’
“It could allow us to write our own regulations in a way that might help a nascent GM agriculture UK” industry in the
The oils don’t all have the same properties – canola makes only DHA, for example, whereas Napier’s oil makes EPA as well.
‘They all have different fatty acid compositions, they differ among themselves and they differ when you line them up against a fish oil, in the same way that a northern hemisphere fish oil differs from a southern hemisphere fish oil. There is no one template.’
Napier said he is pleased with the levels of
EPA and DHA, ‘the important omega-3 fish oils’ that he and his team can make in their camelina plants.
‘We’d already shown that you could use those plant oils as a total replacement for fish oils in salmon and in other fish diets. But as part of our continued collaborations with Stirling we are thinking a bit beyond nutrition now.
‘These novel oils are definitely going to come to the market quite soon. The question our study is going to look at is are there any health impacts, or maybe even better than that, health benefits, from our novel oils.
‘Will it be something that will not just give you a salmon fillet with high levels of EHA and DPA, but was the health of the fish improved as a con
sequence of these novel diets.
‘Those fatty acids are known to be anti-inflammatory – that’s why they are good for humans – so maybe in the fish it will reduce their inflammatory responses as a result of a disease challenge or as a consequence of being in a confined space or if there are environmental challenges.’
The experiments will examine any correlation between the various oils and better fish performance, and Napier believes the results will be interesting not just for the industry but ‘ultimately for the consumer’.
Last year, Rothamsted Research secured funding for five-year trials testing different aspects of the oils (see box right).
The field work is taking place on UK soil but for the larger 2018 salmon trial in Scotland, commercial quantities of camelina had to be grown in the US, where the GM regulations are less restrictive than in the EU.
Rothamsted Research has carried out previous trials in Nebraska in the US and in Manatoba in Canada.
‘If we needed really larger volumes we would need to go to North America again, the US or Canada,’ said Napier.
‘It depends on the volumes we need. In the UK we can still do a reasonable amount and we’ve even increased the area here at Rothamsted that we’re going to use for growing GM crops.
‘In the grand scheme of things it’s not much - two fields instead of one! But it’s a step in the
right direction.’
The viability of GM oil is not going to rest with the science but with its social licence. Napier is a passionate advocate of the advantages of GM plants in delivering more sustainable aquaculture and better human nutrition, and he thinks public perceptions are changing, in a positive way.
‘The critical thing that everybody who works in this area has to do is explain what and whyin fact, it’s much more important to explain the why than the what. People don’t need the nuts and bolts of what it is we’re doing, but if you can explain why you want to do it, I think that makes a difference.
‘The biggest challenge that we all face is climate change and environmental change, which is going to have an impact on everything, including food production.
‘People are realising there are big challenges and they may not be directly related to agriculture or food, but those big challenges are going to impact on us all, probably much sooner than a lot of people thought.
‘And in that respect, we have to try and identify as many innovative solutions as we can possibly come up with.’
He said he is bemused by the trend of blaming agriculture, particularly beef production, for destroying the environment.
‘The solution is we should grow meat cells in a petri dish and make burgers that cost a quarter of a million pounds! You need to find pragmatic and workable solutions that are also economically viable.
‘People from the aquaculture sector get quite worried about how they are perceived in the press but they should try either being in agriculture or even being in GM agriculture!
‘You need to be completely upfront and transparent and don’t try to rebrand what you are doing as something different or call it a fancy name that’s going to make it seem less unacceptable. You just have to explain why you are doing it the way you’re doing it.
‘It takes time and that’s why with the GM we’re getting there but it’s taken us 15 years of slogging away.’
Napier believes the commercial reality of GM oil is within reach.
‘The horizon that we’re working towards is somewhere between three and five years and I think that’s an achievable goal now, though if you’d asked me 10 years ago I might have said the same thing, but it would have been taken with a massive pinch of salt.
‘Now we’re in a position where we don’t need to do much more research, we need to do more product development to move things through the regulatory approval process.’
And he thinks the post-Brexit landscape might offer more favourable conditions for the development of this cutting edge science.
‘Up until a few months ago, I would have said I don’t think it’s going to have any difference at all, even though I assumed we would ultimately leave the EU.
‘The white paper that Theresa May put together, basically saying it’s a business as usual model, we’ll leave the EU but we’ll stay aligned with EU regulations, was effectively quite a soft Brexit.
‘Now, all bets are off, and it’s more likely that we will have something that could be a harder Brexit. Although it’s not something I think is a good thing in general, in the space of GM it’s possible that it will allow us to write our own regulations in a way that might help a nascent GM agriculture industry in the UK.’
In Scotland, where the government has banned genetically modified crop production, there is less likely to be a change of direction and Napier thinks there will be different regional approaches across the UK.
But he remains firmly committed to demonstrating the benefits and opportunities in GM crops, not least for farmers, who could seek new livelihoods in feeding the fast growing aquaculture industry.
‘One of the consequences of leaving the EU is all those subsidies that farming has received are going to go away, so farmers are going to need new ways to turn a profit.
‘What is the alternative…it’s happening [leaving the EU] and it’s analogous to climate change; you have to try and do something about it.’
“We have to try and identify as many innovative solutions as we can possibly come up with”