LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

GROUP 1, SESSION A: ANIMAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
30. Environmental consequences of genetic improvement by selective
breeding: a gilthead sea bream aquaculture case study
Joël Aubin 1,2,* , Ivone Acosta Alba 1,2 , Pierrick Haffray 3 , Jérôme Bugeon 4 , Marc Vandeputte 5,6
1 INRA, UMR1069 Sol Agro et hydrosystème Spatialisation, F-35000 Rennes, France, 2 Agrocampus Ouest,
F-35000 Rennes, France, 3 SYSAAF, Campus de Beaulieu, F-35000 Rennes, France, 4 INRA, LPGP,
UR1037, Campus de Beaulieu, F-35000 Rennes, France, 5 INRA, UMR1313 GABI, F-78352, Jouy-en-Josas,
France, 6 Ifremer, UMR110 Intrepid, F-34250 Palavas-les-Flots, France, Corresponding author. E-mail:
joel.aubin@rennes.inra.fr
Livestock genetic improvement is based on selective breeding of quantitative traits like growth or production
yields. In fish farming, selective breeding has a high potential due to the recent domestication of the species.
Genetic improvement (i.e. shortened duration of the production cycle or increased marketable size due to
selection on body weight) could indirectly impact the use of production means and the valorisation of inputs.
Consequently, the environmental performances of the production system can be modified. In order to explore
the environmental consequences of genetic improvement in animal production and aquaculture, Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA) was used to assess a sea bream (Sparus aurata) production system with expected genetic
gain on growth or fillet yield.
Five scenarios were built using the results of expected selection response: initial unselected control, and 5 or
10% selection pressure on growth or fillet yield during 5 generations (15 to 20 years). The system boundary
included the production of inputs such as feeds, fingerlings, production infrastructures, farm running, the
commercial stage, purchase, the household cooking and consumption stage and the waste management. An
attributional LCA was applied on the different scenarios, based on CML 2 (2000) and Cumulative Energy
Demand methods, implemented in SimaPro 7.2 software, and the use of original data, and ecoinvent database.
The calculated impact categories were climate change, eutrophication, acidification, cumulative energy
demand, and net primary production use (Aubin et al., 2009). The functional unit was 1 kg of edible flesh.
For all the impact categories, the step of fish production (including the upstream processes) contributed for
more than 80% of the impacts.
Due to the high influence of artificial feed production on the LCA results and to the hypothesis of lack of
genetic correlation between the traits selected for and feed efficiency, selection on growth only had a limited
effect on the different impact categories (less than 2%). This limited improvement was essentially due to the
marginal improvement in the use of the infrastructure and the related energy use.
Selective breeding on fillet yield decreased environmental impacts from 10% to 22%. This decrease, calculated
per kg of edible flesh can be explained by the positive genetic correlations between growth and fillet
yield and by the decrease of waste at the household cooking and consumption stage.
This study is the first application of LCA as an assessment method of the environmental relevance of selective
breeding in animal productions. It supports the lack of adverse effect of selection for the targeted traits
(growth, or fillet yield) on the environment. This work is also a first step to introduce environmental goals
into genetic selection schemes.
References
Aubin, J., Papatryphon, E., van der Werf, H. M. G., Chatzifotis, S., 2009. Assessment of the environmental
impact of carnivorous finfish production systems using life cycle assessment. Journal of Cleaner Production
17, 354-361.
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