Feed is one of the main inputs in aquaculture production and a key element in intensive culture. Even in culture systems where the main source of nutrition for the cultured stock is natural food produced by fertilization, supplemental feeding is needed to achieve high production. However, nutrition and feed technology are relatively underdeveloped areas of aquaculture science, particularly in respect of warm-water species and their culture systems. Because of this, the UNDP/FAO Aquaculture Development and Coordination Programme (ADCP) adopted 'Feed Development' as an important item of its activities.
Fish feed development in developing countries is very much hampered by the lack of necessary expertise to formulate, prepare and test appropriate feeds and demonstrate their nutritional and economic value. Therefore, one of the early activities that ADCP undertook was the organization of a specialized Training Course in Fish Feed Technology at the College of Fisheries, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. 9 October - 15 December 1978. The immediate objective of the course was to create a small core of trained personnel in selected countries to initiate programmes of feed ingredient surveys, diet formulation, processing and testing of feeds for species currently cultivated. The texts of lectures at the training course have been compiled and published (ADCP/REP/80/11) and this is now used in the senior aquaculturists training courses in the ADCP Regional Aquaculture Centres in Asia, Africa and Latin America for instruction in nutrition and feed technology. Following the feed technology course, preliminary surveys of feed ingredients and feed milling facilities were started in a number of countries, with the assistance of the personnel trained in Seattle and others. The opportunities offered through FAO and UNDP technical assistance projects also were utilized in this survey and in formulating feeds based on locally available feed ingredients. The ADCP Feed Technologist Dr. K.W. Chow worked for varying periods of time from January 1980 in the ADCP Regional Aquaculture Centres [Dhauli (India), Bangkok (Thailand), Pirassununga (Brazil), Port Harcourt (Nigeria)] and in some FAO and FAO/UNDP technical assistance projects in Venezuela, Mexico, Tunisia, Egypt and Malaysia to assist in the formulation and testing of diets for some of the important cultivated species.
Work on formulation, preparation and testing of feeds based on locally available ingredients is continuing and investigations directed towards finding inexpensive protein sources for fish feeds, are starting in the ADCP Inter-regional Aquaculture Centre in Szarvas, Hungary. This is an interim report of the work so far done under the Feed Development Programme of ADCP. Besides being of value in selecting feed stuffs and formulating compound feeds, it is expected to stimulate further work in this important field in aqua-culture institutes and agencies, as well as in the feed milling industries.
May, 1983
T.V.R. Pillay
Programme Leader
