SuperSmolt® Program
The SuperSmolt® Program takes advantage of MariCal's detailed knowledge of calcium sensing receptors (CaSRs) as nutrient salinity sensors in salmonids and is applied to juvenile salmon and trout for a 3-6 week interval prior to their transfer as smolts from a freshwater hatchery to sea cages.
The SuperSmolt® Program is a combined water treatment and specialty feed process that pre-acclimates the fish to seawater despite the fact that the fish remains in freshwater containing only dilute concentrations of calcium and magnesium salts. Use of the SuperSmolt® Program allows hatchery operators added production flexibility to smoltify fish outside of the normal smoltification window and to obtain multiple benefits that are realized after seawater transfer, including reductions in stress, seawater mortalities and improvement in economic feed conversion ratios (FCRecon).
MariCal's business model has been to target licensing of the SuperSmolt® Program to the commercial salmon production companies throughout Norway, UK/Ireland, Canada and Chile. The SuperSmolt® Program has been in use at all the leading global salmon producing companies.
In July 2008, MariCal established a global license for its smoltification technology, the SuperSmolt® Program with Europharma AS, the Norwegian-based daughter company of Nordly Holdings AS located in Leknes, Norway.
