Producing premium seafood at scale requires countless decisions, from feed formulation and product quality to forecasting, farm management and environmental conditions.
For Yumbah Aquaculture, understanding which factors have the greatest influence on abalone growth and quality presented an opportunity to improve production outcomes across its farms.
To investigate these questions, Yumbah partnered with Flinders University through the National Industry PhD Program. Embedded within the business, PhD candidate and Research and Development Program Support Officer Rebecca Pedler works alongside Yumbah's team to analyse operational data, investigate production challenges and develop evidence-based solutions that can be applied in a commercial environment.
One example is Rebecca Pedler’s work on abalone lip colour, an important market trait for greenlip abalone. By analysing operational datasets from across the farms, she identified a link between colour, age and light exposure during grow-out. That finding redirected the research toward dietary supplementation as a practical way to support consistent colour across different grow-out conditions.
“Diets developed from that work are now being rolled out commercially and I was able to deliver these diets at no additional operating cost by developing a least-cost formulation model,” she explains. The finding led to a dietary approach that resulted in a clearer pathway to a consistent, premium product for customers.
Another example is Pedler’s research into whether algal-based ingredients in abalone feed can improve growth, survival and market quality, while helping farms respond to pressures such as rising sea water temperatures.
Gavin Partridge, General Manager – Technical at Yumbah Aquaculture, says that rather than relying on research conducted outside the organisation’s own conditions, partnering with Flinders and having Pedler embedded with the company means she understands the day-to-day realities of the farms and can help test what is technically possible, commercially viable and operationally practical.
“This framework maximises research translation, rather than relying on published studies that are not conducted under our own conditions,” Partridge says.
Partridge says Pedler’s research being so closely aligned with their needs means the work can adapt as priorities shift, while also allowing farm managers and technical staff to help shape research design and assess whether findings are likely to be adopted commercially.
That is one of the greatest strengths of the model Partridge explains.
“The greatest benefit has been having someone who can take on the technically demanding projects that do not fit neatly into anyone’s day-to-day role,” he says.
“Because Rebecca is embedded here, that work is tested against how the farms operate as they develop, so by the time it is ready, it has already been shaped by practical constraints rather than requiring rework afterwards.”
For businesses and organisations considering whether to partner with a PhD researcher at Flinders University, Pedler says the value lies not only in the research output, but in the capability created within the organisation.
“The industry partner gets access to a dedicated researcher who can investigate real-world problems with academic rigour,” she says.
“The benefit is not just the research output itself, but the capacity it creates within the business.”
