NORA Production Working Group

On the 16^th May a meeting of the Production Working Group was held, joined by 19 enthusiastic members. 

During the meeting, Ariana Martini from the Italian Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA) presented on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a tool to assess the environmental performance of mollusk aquaculture. Ariana explained the methodology of LCA and presented a case study for the Manila clam supply chain. She explained that results of LCA can be expressed in different units.

John Theodorou from University of Patras (Greece) presented on how the knowledge gathered by aquaculture-based conservation strategies already applied for the critical endangered bivalve Pinna nobilis can contribute to the restoration of the historical native oyster grounds in Greece.

Additionally, Eve Galimany and Fiz da Costa launched the historical flat oyster aquaculture data initiative, which is inspired by the initiative developed in the framework of the NORA Historical Ecology WG that mapped historical oyster reef presence across its biogeographic range. The main goals of the initiative are providing a historical and up to date status of flat oyster aquaculture in Europe and elucidating if aquaculture locations are the same where flat oysters once lived and if aquaculture is returning the ecological services that oysters once provided. Collaborators will gather the information about culture locations and systems, production in quantity and value, etc. from historical records, papers, museums, among others. A call for collaborators from countries within Europe was made during the meeting and participants engaged during and after the meeting. The findings of the study will be included in a peer reviewed paper. 

As a follow up of this meeting, a dedicated one for the Historical flat oyster aquaculture data initiative will be held on the 13^th June (11:00 CET) to present the excel file for data collection and to have an open discussion of questions submitted by participants around the type of data that will be collected. 

Lastly, Fiz da Costa updated WG members on the collaboration with the NORA Genetics WG about the initiative dealing with questions about genetics of interest for the production and restoration of flat oysters. Forty-eight questions were received from Production WG members and they were classified in 4 main groups. A first synthesis was presented at NORA5 conference. A discussion was held about what is the next step that should be done for this initiative and whether there is an interest of NORA community in having guidelines on genetics on native oyster restoration.If you would like to join the group or are interested in participating in any initiative of the ones NORA Production WG, please contact Fiz da Costa (fiz.dacosta@ieo.csic.es).