SEAFDEC/AQD Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center | Aquaculture Department
Twelve participants from six Southeast Asian countries completed the Training Course on Fish Nutrition and Feed Development, held from 20 to 27 May 2024.
The Government of Japan-Trust Fund funded the participation of eight trainees – one each from Cambodia, Lao PDR, Singapore, Thailand, and four from the Philippines. Another four participants, two each from Brunei Darussalam and the Philippines, were privately funded.
During the training, SEAFDEC/AQD experts shared basic principles on fish nutrition and techniques for formulating, preparing, and evaluating cost-efficient fish diets.
Through practical sessions, trainees engaged in feed preparation and pilot feed milling. They also gained experience in feed evaluation, processing and use of alternative feed ingredients, and economic analysis of feed production.
When asked about their takeaways, Man Yin Teo, a trainee from the Singapore Food Agency, remarked how the training not only taught them feed mill operations, but also emphasized the need for quality assurance of the raw materials and the feeds produced.
Grace Abdala, a trainee from the Philippines who works as an aquaculturist of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), also remarked that the special focus on alternative feed ingredients is timely due to the “increasing fish production effort from aquaculture and the declining supply of fish meal.”
“To make aquaculture sustainable in the long run, we should focus on nutrition as feeds are considered the highest recurrent cost in aquaculture, often ranging from 30 to 60 percent depending on the intensity of the operation,” said SEAFDEC/AQD Chief Dan Baliao during the training course’s closing ceremony.
Hoping that the trainees have gained substantial knowledge, Chief Baliao added that the training is a step in the right direction towards solving problems in aquaculture feeds and nutrition.
