Breeding & genetics

When I was contemplating a topic for this month’s article, I was reminded of a question my daughter asked me several years ago: “Can we feed our dogs a vegetarian diet?”

Massive floods in Assam, north-east India, have caused severe damage to the state’s fish farms, dashing farmers’ expectations of a profitable season.

Ananda Malakar, from the Indian state of Odisha, was inspired to start farming Asian catfish after watching a video on a social media platform last June.

Kenya’s trout farming sector might be small, and facing challenges, but it still has great potential to grow, according to two of the sector’s key players.

Despite its impressive growth rate and resistance to disease, the GIFT strain of tilapia is yet to fulfil its true potential in Odisha, according to several key players in the Indian state’s aquaculture sector.

There’s plenty of room for improvement in both shrimp feeds and genetics according to Ronnie Tan, Johan Brouwer and Willem van der Pijl.

Triploidy is widely used in aquaculture to improve growth rates, reduce possible impacts of farmed animals on wild aquatic ecosystems and enhance product quality, but there’s room for improvement and for alternative technologies.

Plans to ban the sale of wild-caught fish for the pet trade have caused divisions in the British Veterinary Association (BVA).

Dagón – Israel’s pioneering hatchery and leading fish farmer – offers a tantalising glimpse of how aquaculture in the MENA region is evolving and of the emerging species that have the greatest commercial potential.

Shrimp that have been bred for their resistance to disease and ability to thrive despite environmental challenges should be valued as highly – if not more highly – than those bred for their growth rates in many parts of Indonesia.

A series of recent trials suggests that the European spiny lobster (Palinurus elephas), may be well suited to aquaculture for restocking dwindling wild stocks and, potentially, for growing to market size.

27-year-old Shady Hamdy owns and operates the Ibn Al-Nafis tilapia hatchery – alongside Dr Tamer Bastweesy – in Kafr El Sheikh, Egypt.

Shrimp farming veteran Victoria Alday Sanz, who is also editor of the newly-published second volume of The shrimp book, explains why her original deserved a follow-up.

Nueva Pescanova’s plans for starting the world’s first commercial octopus farm may have caused an uproar in some quarters of the mainstream media, but aquaculture of the animals could be the best hope for sustaining wild stocks.

The three Fernandez Muniz brothers are pioneering a new form of shellfish farming on Galicia’s Ria de Arousa – ongrowing clams in lantern nets in order to improve the fortunes of the thousands of artisanal shellfish producers that operate in the Rias Biaxas re…