Aquaculture Feed Conversion
November 16th, 2008 by Mark PontifexMany of the posts on this site have addressed, various different types of feeds available, ie lupins, but none have addressed the concern of increasing feed converion ratios. We know all the statistics about the growth in aquaculture, but the simple fact is that fish feed still accounts for up to 50% of the costs of an aquaculture operation. So in the current financial crisis and volatile commodity markets, shouldn’t the industry be focussed on increasing feed conversion ratios?
Much effort and initiative should be invested in ways to practically quantify true appetite and to detect feed wastage in order to promote effective feed management. Feed wastage detector systems such as the hydro-acoustic feed detectors have successfully been implemented in aquaculture systems abroad to monitor food sinking through aquaculture cage-systems. Although effective in minimising feed wastage, these systems do not detect fish feeding behaviour or appetite and are therefore limited in its pro-active ability to predict the appetite of the fish as indicated by the start of the next feeding rhythm.
Does anyone have any suggestions to what is a whole of industry problem, so that we can have a sustainable industry for many years to come.
Tags: feed
Posted in Market. Permalink for this post: permalink.
If you are a Digg user, please 
Digg this post. If you use use Del.icio.us, then add us in: 
Del.icio.us
What do you think?
Leave a comment! Or send a trackback from your own blog.
Like to read more? Subscribe with RSS
November 20th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
FCR - economic and biological - are of paramount importance to the entire aquafeed industry. It was and is the focus of a great deal of research by the commercial feed companies and research institutes… You can find information relevant to aquafeed on the aquafeed industry information portal: http://www.aquafeed.com