Agriculture Business Week

Shrimp is the most important commodity, by value, in the international seafood trade. The shrimp industry has grown exponentially in the last decades, and growth is expected to continue for years to come.

A new and better technology to culture shrimps is being used by many enterprising shrimp farmers nowadays. Green water technology is a technique that cultures shrimps in water that is abundant in phytoplankton i.e. Chlorella, turning the water green hence, its name.

Pond Preparation
To prepare the pond, it should be dried and drained of water for three weeks until the soil at the bottom is cracked. The muck or the black soil at the bottom of the pond should be scraped off. Then the ponds are flooded with water and dried for another week. Hydrated lime at a rate of 2 tons per hectare is applied before the final flushing and sun drying.

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Anyone who visits Ryan’s Farm at Barangay Mapaway, Tabuk City, Kalinga is impressed by the organic agriculture and aquaculture practiced in it by Jeremy and Corazon Ryan. He is a British mining engineer who settled in the country after meeting Cora, a biology graduate, in Baguio City in the 1980s.

The Ryans are well-known in the Cordillera Administrative Region as the organic farming couple. When asked how they got into it, they tell everyone that, it came about because of earthworms.

Cora learned the basics of vermiculture, the farming of earthworms, when she attended the First International Symposium-Workshop on Vermi Technologies for Developing Countries held at Los Banos, Laguna in November 2005. She applied what she learned at their 7-hectare farm that had ricefields, orchards and fishponds. With the initial stock of the African nightcrawler acquired from a local source, she ventured into vermicompost (organic fertilizer) production using organic materials available in their farm and locality such as rice straw, carabao and horse manure, banana trunks, kangkong and bignay leaves.

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Trials in Shrimp
The Sanolife Bacillus strains, when applied through the feed (top dressed at the farm site or at the feed mill), have been evaluated in shrimp grow out (Litopenaeus vannamei, L. stylirostris and Penaeus monodon ) in Asia, the Pacific region and Latin America. The application of these bacteria (concentration ranging from 1 x 107 to 1.5 x 108 cfu/g feed according to rearing conditions), in association with suitable pond management, has led to marked benefits to the farmers:
1. Faster growth – Scientists at IFREMER showed in a controlled experiment with replicates that there was a very significant increase in growth rate when the Sanolife Bacillus strains were mixed with the feed pellets shortly before feeding the shrimp (Moriarty et al., 2006). Similar improvements in growth rates were recorded with L. vannamei under commercial conditions in Ecuador and Brazil (Figure 1 ).

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Despite the doubts about probiotics – Due to unrealistic claims, poor quality products or mode of delivery – appropriate probiotics do actually work in aquaculture production.

Olivier Decamp and David Moriarty explain
Aquaculture is developing and intensifying in most regions of the world in response to the increasing demand for aquatic food products (FAO, 2006). This intensity has led to an increased use and misuse of drugs and chemicals in aquaculture, resulting in food safety concerns. Several alternative strategies to the prophylactic use of antibiotics in disease control have been proposed: installment of biosecurity management, effective vaccination, stimulation of the non-specific defense mechanisms of the host (alone or in combination with vaccines), as well as microorganisms (probiotics). Defining probiotics is a challenge – even more so for aquaculture applications. Historically, probiotics were defined according to their expected benefit or improvement to the host’s intestinal balance. Being concerned with humans and terrestrial animals, probiotics were generally Gram-positive obligate or facultative anaerobes, mostly lactic bacteria.

Fish are different
Aquatic animals differ from terrestrial animals in the level of interaction between the intestinal microbiota and the surrounding environment. The bacteria present in the aquatic environment influence the composition of the gut microflora and vice versa. This environmental influence is much greater for shrimp and other invertebrates than for fish. The bacterial community composition of the intestinal tract of aquatic animals is different from that found in terrestrial animals. Gram-negative facultative anaerobes generally prevail in the digestive tract of fish and shellfish; Gram-positive obligate or facultative anaerobes dominate that of humans and terrestrial animals (Gatesoupe, 1999). Aquatic animals are poikilothermic and their associated microbiota may vary with temperature changes; salinity changes in the rearing environment will also affect the microbiota. An important consequence is that the most efficient probiotics used for aquaculture will differ from those for terrestrial species.

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Fisherfolk in Aparri, Cagayan have forged measures in harvesting aramang (Nematopolaemon. sp.) to conserve this soft-shelled shrimp. which has been the primary product of the town.

Called the Gentlemen’s Agreement, it states that gathering of aramang is allowed only during daytime from 5:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M., good weather, and when it is not gravid. It also states that harvest period is 5 to 7 days only with 15 days gap between periods, and that a meeting among gatherers should be conducted first before harvest to set price and estimate demand.

This agreement was reached to ensure high population of aramang as the production of this endemic species th,at thrives in the estuarine area of the Cagayan River plummeted in 1989 to 1993 due to indiscriminate gathering. And since the agreement was forged, aramang stocks rebounded and have not been threatened since then. In fact in 2008, production of this shrimp was recorded high at 4,460 metric tons, according to the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics.

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The ulang or giant freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) is a high-value species that can now be commercially grown in the country with the availability of fry (post-larvae) from local hatcheries and culture technologies. It sells for P300-600 per kilo at a size of 60-80 grams apiece.

Freshwater pond culture of the tilting in Central Luzon has progressed much, thanks to the efforts of researchers and extensionists at the National Freshwater Fisheries Technology Center (NFFTC) of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources in CLSU, Science City of Mufioz, Nueva Ecija led by NFFTC head Melchor Tayamen. Fry of the prawn and extension services for its grow-out culture can be availed from the center.

One cooperator of the NFFTC for ulang culture who has made good is Dr. Arturo Marcelino, Sr., a practicing family physician in Zaragoza, Nueva Ecija. He first tried growing prawn last year in a 1,000-sq.m. pond in his farm at Barangay Santa Barbara, San Antonio, Nueva Ecija.

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Watch for aquaculture’s next big stars: Vannamei, Redclaw Crayfish, and Basa Catfish .

Philip Cruz of Cruz Aquaculture Corporation said that there is a rapid growth and favorable business opportunities with these three species during the recent Mindanao Food Congress held in Davao City.

“These three aquaculture species are available for culture with favorable farming traits such as efficient feed converters, labor and space saving, and can be cultured in variety of environment,” he said.

VANNAMEI OR WHITE SHRIMP
The development of White Shrimp (Penaeus vannamei), which is now the dominant shrimp species in Asia, presents a promise for the country’s aquaculture industry.

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Fishpond operators may now feel more secured on the health of shrimps as a facility that can easily detect diseases on shrimps is now operational at the National Integrated Fisheries Technology Development Center (NITFDC) in Brgy. Bonuan Binloc, Dagupan City.

Equipped with imported sophisticated equipment, the Animal Fish Health Laboratory is only the second of its kind in the Philippines, according to Dr. Wesley Rosario, executive director of the National Fisheries Research and Development Institute(NFPRDI) in Dagupan City. The firs laboratory is at the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center(SEAFDEC) in Tigbauan Iloilo.

Dr. Rosario said fish farmers can bring to the laboratory samples of shrimps that they intend to buy for detection of possible diseases. The laboratory will check if the shrimps being raised by farmers are infected with viruses that can spread to other fish farms and seriously affect the industry as a whole.

In short, the facility could prevent the spread of the Taura Syndrome, the most destructive shrimp disease, which was first detected in the Nile River.

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Experts from the recently concluded Philippine Shrimp Congress made sure of the success of the white shrimp culture.

Thirty-eight (38) grow-out farms and seven (7) accredited hatcheries might not seem a lot, but their very existence signals the Philippines’ entry into white shrimp Litopenaeus uannamei aquaculture.

Foreign and local experts speaking during the 6t’h Philippine Shrimp Congress held 28-30 May 2008 in Bacolod City, south of the Philippine capital of Manila, have agreed on how to ensure success in white shrimp culture:
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Ace Limpin of San Fernando City Pampanga, Christopher “Boyet” Cruz of Hagonoy,  Bulacan, and Mario Aquino of Binmaley, Pangasinan do not know each other personally but they have three things in common.

They are young, handling millions of pesos in their fishpond operations and, raking in lots of profits that most men of their age would not even have a chance to hold even for a few seconds. Most of all, they use Nova Pure PCM Aqua, a product of Novatech Agri-Food Industries, as a bio-organic fertilizer for robust lablab production.

Lablab is fed to prawns, bangus and mudcrab, which the three young men are raising.

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