Improving smallholder fish and shrimp farming in developing countries
Improving smallholder fish and shrimp farming in developing countries
Currently, around 17 million metric tons of fish, one fifth of the global fish catch, is used to produce fish feeds for aquaculture.
But a breakthrough innovation developed by CSIRO Aquaculture scientists in Australia in 2009, known as Novacq (an abbreviation of novel aquafeed), is helping to reduce reliance on harvesting wild fish to feed to farmed fish and crustaceans. NovacqTM is an aquafeed ingredient produced by marine microbes that, when used as a feed additive, results in 20-30% faster growing and healthier farmed shrimp.
Now, WorldFish aims to make Novacq available to smallholder shrimp and fish farmers in developing countries, where aquaculture is growing rapidly yet yields are often low.
With funding from the Blue Economy Challenge grant program, WorldFish will next year start field trials in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Tanzania – the critical first step to bringing Novacq to market in these and other counties in the Indian Ocean region from 2018 onwards.
Read more here
CSIRO Aquaculture contact
Dr Cedric Simon – Research Group Leader, Nutrition