Effective aquaculture research has to be oriented toward developing feasible husbandry practices. As the projected increases in aquaculture production in the developing world are expected to be obtained by the application of known technologies, adaptive research to enable the transfer of technologies or the improvement of the techniques involved will have highest priority in the context of a strategy for worldwide development of the industry. The nature of facilities and variety of disciplinal expertise required make it extremely difficult, at least for the present, to organize the required type of research on a national basis. On the other hand, centralizing such research in one international centre would be counter-productive because of the differences in species cultured and the need to study the various aspects in the set of environmental conditions in which the particular species occurs and those in which it has to be reared. However, geographic regions which have, or plan to adopt, the same culture systems and have very similar climatic and socio-economic conditions, can be identified. Problems facing the application of selected systems in those regions can be investigated more economically and efficiently in regional institutions. The results of such work will have to be tested in national centres and any major problems encountered referred back to the regional institutions for further studies and solutions. The national centres need to be strengthened for this purpose and for undertaking research on problems of a purely local nature. Close linkages will have to be established between the regional and national centres so as to form effective networks of research centres. These centres could also organize the multidisciplinary training of core personnel for aquaculture development as indicated earlier. If existing research stations are to be expanded to serve as regional research and training centres the estimated capital costs would be between U.S. $ 5 and 10 million. The annual operating costs may be about U.S.$ 1 million for one region.
