Smolts

Landcatch smolts are premium young fish. All are produced in isolated, land-based production sites in Argyll, Wester Ross and Inverness, and they are the product of a year-on-year improvement programme.   
 
After becoming the first aquaculture company to pinpoint a major gene influencing Infectious Pancreatic Necrosis (IPN), we not only moved on to prove that sea lice resistance is inherited but have now produced juvenile fish with improved resistance.  

We have been breeding from selected pedigree families to increase genetic resistance to sea lice in each new generation, and Landcatch smolts going to sea during 2011 have been grown directly from broodstock and eggs selected specially for improved resistance.

The pace of this development is set to accelerate, as Landcatch and our academic and research partners are looking to combine this incremental approach with use of a cutting-edge genomic selection tool for Atlantic salmon – the SNP chip, used to correlate variations in DNA sequences with predisposition to disease.

Our smolts are Freedom Foods, CoGP and GlobalGap-compliant and can be supplied at 80-100g from August to May (or July if we have sufficient notice).