BioMar’s research advances waterborne feeding systems

DENMARK – Danish feed company BioMar is making significant strides in aquafeed nutrition for waterborne feeding systems, a technology gaining popularity among salmon farmers for its potential to reduce energy consumption, microplastic pollution, and sea lice exposure. 

Unlike traditional airborne methods, waterborne systems deliver feed underwater in aquaculture tanks, offering advantages in feed distribution and fish welfare but also presenting new nutritional challenges.

Through its extensive research, BioMar has identified key factors contributing to nutrient loss in submerged feeding systems. 

These insights highlight the complexity of formulating feed that maintains its integrity, digestibility, and nutritional value under waterborne conditions. If the feed breaks down too quickly or loses essential nutrients, it can impact fish growth and overall system efficiency.

Leveraging expertise from its ORBIT product range and POWER grower diets, BioMar has made notable progress in optimising raw materials and production processes to improve feed performance in submerged environments. 

The company’s early validation trials on commercial systems have shown promising results, reinforcing confidence in its approach.

“Through our research, we now have a better understanding of the complex dynamics of waterborne feeding,” said Ewan Cameron, product marketing manager for BioMar’s grower category. “These insights enable us to refine our feed formulations and production techniques, significantly reducing nutrient loss.”

Building on ORBIT and POWER for waterborne success

BioMar’s experience with land-based aquaculture has been instrumental in developing solutions for waterborne feeding. The ORBIT product range, designed for land-based systems, optimises biofilter performance while ensuring that fish receive maximum nutrition. 

These same principles apply to waterborne feeding, where maintaining feed integrity is critical to minimising waste and ensuring efficient nutrient uptake.

Similarly, BioMar’s knowledge of high-energy diets, particularly its POWER range, has contributed to developing waterborne-specific feeds. POWER diets are formulated to deliver high levels of digestible energy (DE), a challenging feat that BioMar has mastered over years of research. 

This expertise provides a solid foundation for creating effective, high-performance diets tailored to submerged feeding environments.

While BioMar’s research in this area is ongoing, the company remains committed to tackling the challenges of waterborne feeding head-on.

BioMar aims to equip farmers with the tools they need to optimize production efficiency and sustainability by developing a specialised grower diet for these systems.

“Our responsibility is to ensure that farmers can extract the full potential of any diet, maximising fish performance while minimising environmental impact,” said Cameron. “With waterborne feeding systems gaining momentum, we are focused on delivering solutions that help farmers achieve the best possible results.”

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