Farming Atlantic salmon is Australia's most internationally competitive and sophisticated sustainable finfish aquaculture. The product has an international reputation for quality and this, in part, reflects the feeds used on salmon farms. Thus, major importance is attached to the availability of economic high quality salmon feeds. In other countries producing salmonids considerable public and commercial financial resources are directed into salmonid nutrition research. This means that advances are continually being made in our understanding of salmonid nutrition and feed design. However, this information is not directly applicable to salmon farmed in Australia nor is it always available in the public domain and it is therefore extremely important that Australia maintains its own capability for research on Atlantic salmon. The psalmon and trout. The research is needed because:-
1. Environmental conditions are very different in Australia compared with other areas in the world where salmon are farmed and research is conducted and therefore nutritional requirements and feed utilisation will also differ;
2. Ingredients that are available to European feed manufacturers are not readily or cheaply available in Australia and therefore a considerable amount of research is not relevant to the design of salmon feeds for Australian conditions;
3. Ingredients that are available in Australia and have great potential to be used in salmon feeds are not (yet) of interest to feed manufacturers outside Australia and therefore research needs to be conducted on these;
4. The availability and cost of fish meal will increasingly be a major restriction to producing economic high quality salmon feeds.