Thailand, a country of 70 million people, features a warm and humid tropical climate, with average temperatures ranging from 18-38°C. Its climate is characterized by tropical monsoon (May-October) with heavy rains. The country’s geography is mostly covered by large central plains and plateau , full of rice fields, fertile river systems , swamps, and a long coastline very suitable for aquaculture. Freshwater aquaculture is crucial for rural food and nutrition security, with Nile tilapia, catfishes and many others being widely cultured. In the coastal areas, Pacific white shrimp contributes significantly to the value and volume of total aquaculture production. Aquaculture generates substantial portion of the total export revenue of over US$7 billion each year maintaining Thailand’s strong position as a global exporter of fisheries products. A widespread aquaculture engages over one million people and probably more are employed along its value chain.
Recent aquaculture development is driven by commercialization of genetics and breeding technologies and enhancing productivity through sustainable grow-out practices . Commercial exploitation breeding technologies can be seen in Nile tilapia . Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus ) along its hybrids e.g. red tilapia ( O. niloticus x O. mossambicus) has been the no. 1 species by volume due to its remarkable development in hatchery technology. S ome farms maintain a large number of broodstocks (e.g. 0.5 million broods and 200 family lines), produce mass-scale monosex high quality (99-100% male) fingerlings (200-300 million/year), use automatic packing using conveyor belts used in some other industries , computer aided machines for counting of fry and so on. Similarly, some catfish hatcheries inject more than 1,000 females, produce over 50 kg eggs and sell over 10 million hatchlings in a single day. Some other farmers, apply neo-female technique in Macrobrachium rosenbergii ) to produce monosex male PLs. Similarly, breeding of Asian sea bass (Lates calcarifer ), snakehead (Channa striata), Giant Mekong catfish (Pangasianodon gigas) , mud eels (Anguilla sp.) , blue swimming crab (Portunus pelagicus) and mud crab (Scylla serrata ), sand lobsters (Thenus orientalis ), oysters, sea horse, squids have been successful and many other new species are being tried. Nursing of different species are done by different groups of specialized farmers who buy hatchlings or larvae to make them bigger in size and supply to grow-out farmers, they have high survival and attain marketable size in a short period of time. Doing nursing and selling feeds as a business, some farmers earn a lot, w hereas in many other countries, nursing is a part of the hatcheries. Nursing is mostly done using hapas or in ponds covering by bird nets . Live feeds are fed during early stages of nursing e.g. Artemia , Moina etc. which are normally produced on-site or in different farms. Some farmers produce only M oina and sell daily to earn US$100-200/day. L ive Moina are normally fed to the carnivorous species e.g. sea bass, catfish, pangasius, same as artemia to larvae of shrimp and prawn. For the grow-out , large number of farmers still use extensive and semi-intensive systems, but smarter ones are shifting towards highly intensive with higher densities, heavy aeration and waste management systems. Pre/pro-biotics and phytogenic products are replacing antibiotics shifting to eco-friendly methods.
Our goal is to help transfer new knowledge and technologies for the benefits of other countries and their people with a view to ensuring food and nutrition security, income and employment . In cooperation with various government stations, we organize hands-on training in private fish farms and study visit to feed companies , processing factories and different types of markets. We also design community development projects as a part of outreach activities and also offer technical assistance to establish aqua farms, feed industry, fish processing and marketing facilities. This paper highlights the unique features of recent aquaculture developments occurring in Thailand.