Perfect food for perfect prawns
After more than 10 years of research, CSIRO Aquaculture scientists have perfected the Novacq™ prawn feed additive. Farmed prawns fed with Novacq grow on average 30 per cent faster, are healthier and can be produced with no fish products in their diet, a world-first achievement in sustainability.
CSIRO and Australian owned and based Ridley AgriProducts have announced that Ridley AgriProducts has taken a licence to produce and distribute Novacq in Australia and several South-East Asian countries. Mr Bob Harvey, General Manager Aquafeed from Ridley AgriProducts said this means the Australian industry will soon have the opportunity to use the Novacq feed additive to boost domestic prawn farm productivity.
“We’ve seen this product in action and we know how great it is. We’ve conducted multiple laboratory-based trials, and in conjunction with CSIRO and a great customer of ours, Australian Prawn Farms, we have proven the effects of Novacq when commercially grown, added into a commercial prawn feed and fed to black tiger prawns in multiple full-scale commercial sized ponds,” Mr Harvey said.
“Adding Novacq into even the best performing prawn diets on the market, we proved a significant incremental growth rate and food conversion rate improvement.
“We are really excited to now be able to start the process of commercialising Novacq, so that Australian prawn farmers will soon be able to benefit from it. Over the next twelve months we will be upscaling production, performing additional tests and further farm-scale trials, and then to move into full-scale commercial production.”
The effectiveness of Novacq has already been demonstrated on one Australian prawn farm, with Mr Matt West, Operations Manager of Australian Prawn Farms based at Ilbilbie in Northern Queensland, getting a chance to see the results over a period of four months testing the feed additive on black tiger prawns.
“What I saw on my farm was a clear incremental growth compared to the high quality diets that were used as a control for the large-scale trials we recently conducted at our farm,” Mr West said.
“Apart from the improved growth rate I observed, what is really exciting to me about Novacq is the very real possibility for Ridley to ultimately be able to produce a great performing prawn feed without using any marine sourced proteins in the diet. This will, of course, mean an even more sustainably produced prawn crop being farmed at Australian Prawn Farms.”
Read more here.
CSIRO Aquaculture contact
Dr Cedric Simon – Senior Research Scientist, Breeding and Genomics