Breeding & genetics

The environmental impacts of aquaculture are often in the spotlight. The need for sustainable practices is now firmly embedded in the minds of the public, governments and industry – but this sometimes presents trade-offs in fish welfare.

Following a challenging seven years, Nigeria’s first commercial-scale black tiger prawn producer is now up, running and ready to supply high end markets with ASC certified shrimp – from Lagos, to Rotterdam and beyond.

The 50th anniversary of Cloan Hatcheries is an astonishing milestone in the trout farming sector that Dick Haldane is rightly proud of. However – unlike one of his other achievements – it hasn’t yet earned him a telegram from one of the world’s most feared dic…

Asia’s shrimp farmers need to reboot their attitude to biosecurity and stocking densities, argues Robins McIntosh, in a follow-on to Monday’s article on the dangers of disinfection*.

Most of the fish currently farmed in the sea are carnivores, but there’s a strong argument for producing more marine herbivores, which don’t depend on diets containing fish meal and fish oil.

Indonesia has developed a range of local strains of tilapia, largely to improve growth rates and general disease resistance, but there’s still scope for these to be more widely adopted.

Cryopreservation – involving the freezing and ultra-low temperature storage of ova and sperm – has been demonstrated with varying degrees of success across a range of farmed aquatic species, but more standardised techniques are needed to ensure that it works c…

Oceanpick, which is on track to produce 1,200 tonnes of barramundi this year and is one of Sri Lanka’s flagship aquaculture producers, has ambitions to reach 3,000 tonnes a year.

Flexible ingredient formulations, enzymes, optimised microbiomes and genetics are playing their part in bringing multiple farmed fish species closer to precision nutrition, according to Alltech’s global manager of aquaculture research.

Ecuador’s relatively extensive shrimp farming techniques have ensured that their shrimp are robust enough to cope with the presence of pathogens that would be disastrous in most parts of Asia – allowing them to continuously produce shrimp sustainably for decad…

Colombia’s aquaculture industry has been stuck in a cycle of low productivity and low profitability, but a recent value chain analysis notes that the country could capitalise on its climate and geography to become a leading producer of tropical – and native – …

Advances in black tiger prawn (Penaeus monodon) genetics are leading to an impressive renaissance of the species in multiple regions, according to Robins McIntosh.