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The first brood fish in the Aqua Gen system were stripped on 9th September. This is the earliest date ever in the history of Aqua Gen that stripping has commenced. The first deliveries of early eggs will therefore be brought forward to weeks 43-44.

We have also previously delivered eggs in week 44, but that was a small quantity. With the early and even maturation we are observing this year; we expect that we will be able to supply a considerable volume in week 44.

Quality control checks on eggs carried out 24 hours after fertilization have showed a 90 % fertilization rate in this year's first egg batch. This is very satisfactory and experience shows that this indicates a high quality of both eggs and milt among the brood fish.

Efforts Being Made for Flexible and Predictable Delivery of Eggs

Aqua Gen is working continuously to extend stripping and delivery periods for both early and late eggs. The figure below shows how the delivery period for salmon eggs has developed over the last 10 years. We can see that there is a clear tendency that our customers require several egg inputs spread over a longer time period.

In the last egg season 2008/2009, 51 % of the volume was delivered as early eggs, 44 % as normal eggs, and 5 % as late eggs. Aqua Gen intends to be on the leading edge of this development and have further adapted our production procedures so that we can now deliver eggs ten months of the year.

The combination of the selective breeding nucleus from four yearly cohorts into a common population is now complete. In this process, which started in 2004, the best families from each cohort were used to create one population consisting of 800 families.

Eggs delivered to the market in the 2008/2009 season, and which have been or will be placed in the sea as autumn smolt in 2009 and spring smolt in 2010 are the first genetic material from this combined genetic nucleus. One genetic nucleus contributes to increasing predictability since there will no longer be variation between years due to which of the yearly cohorts is reproducing.