Creation of a DNA database of commercially important marine species in the Balearic Islands

The project

The increase in consumer demand in the Balearic Islands, especially in the tourism sector, for top-quality and fresh fish has led to the creation of local commercial designations to add value to kilometre-zero sea produce. However, as the restaurant sector demands more fish than the Balearic Islands can supply, fish has to be purchased from elsewhere and the external origin is often omitted. Given this situation, the local fish market can come up against competition from non-Balearic fish that is sold as locally caught.

To prevent deceiving consumers and to guarantee the traceability of the island origin of fish produce, it is important to acquire basic scientific knowledge to genetically characterise the populations of Balearic Island marine species.

In short, the objective is to recognise local, km-0 fish produce unequivocally using stock identification techniques currently made possible by molecular biology. This will not only protect existing and future commercial categories with labels but also with objective genetics-based origin identification.

This project achieves the above with the following actions:

• Acquiring instrumentation
• Specific instrumentation for molecular procedures that will be used for studying nucleotide DNA sequences will be acquired by following contract procedures in current regulations. This instrumentation will be installed in the facilities of the Marine Research and Aquaculture Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food of the Government of the Balearic Islands.
• Performance
• The project includes collecting and/or acquiring samples of commercially important species directly from onboard fishing vessels throughout all the Balearic Islands, transporting the samples to a laboratory and processing and analysing them.

The project will result in a series of socioeconomic benefits for the fisheries, food and tourism sectors: 

• It will meet consumers’ demand for quality food
• It will foster competitiveness in the local sector as it will generate added value for its produce
• It will promote the creation of protected geographical designations (currently non-existent for the fisheries sector in the Balearic Islands)
• It will help the sustainable management of resources
• It will provide innovation, research and development centres in the Balearic Islands with laboratory techniques and instruments to analyse and diagnose fraud
• It will give local authorities a fast and precise verification and detection method and reliable biological information for inspections and management plans