Taikong continues to push aquaculture boundaries

TAIWAN - By introducing a palm-sized aquarium, Taikong Corp, the nation's leading aquatic biotechnology firm, hopes that ornamental fish will find homes in more households in the near future.

"Raising ornamental fish will become a more personal activity. People used to buy large aquariums and put them in the living room for the whole family, but nowadays smaller tanks are cropping up on desks at home and at the office," said Fisher Lin, manager of Taikong's research and development department.

Lin spoke to the Taipei Times at the 2006 Taiwan Biotechnology Industry Exhibition, which began yesterday and will run through Sunday at Exhibition Hall 1 of the Taipei World Trade Center.

"Taiwan is famous for its technical advances in the breeding of groupers or grass shrimp. With the Council of Agriculture now starting to encourage the breeding of ornamental fish as well as edible fish, we believe more people will raise fish in the long term," Lin said.

Taikong is renowned for its glowing fish, which Time magazine declared one of the "coolest inventions" of 2003.

The company first made a name for itself in 2001, when it displayed a rice fish of Japanese origin which glowed a neon green color.

The effect is achieved by injecting a fluorescent protein extracted from jelly fish into the nucleus of a rice fish embryo.

Source: Taipei Times