Fisheries are an important source of food, income and nutrition in Tanzania, where 25% of the country’s population depends on coastal resources or inland lakes for their livelihoods. Over 180,000 people are employed in the fisheries sector, with a further 19,223 people involved in fish farming. WorldFish is working with the Tanzanian government and development partners to increase aquaculture production, reduce postharvest fish losses and enhance the role of fish in nutrition.

The CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food Systems (FISH) focuses on the interlinked challenges of sustainable aquaculture and small-scale fisheries (SSFs), and enhancing the contribution of fish to poverty reduction, improved human nutrition and environmental management, with a geographical focus on Africa, Asia and the Pacific.

Two sustainable, low-cost pond polyculture technologies have been developed to culture carps and mola in ponds, and culture carps and mola in ponds connected to rice fields. These technologies can increase total fish production from ponds. Farmers depend on carps as an income source, and mola is rich in micronutrients that can help to meet the nutritional requirements of the rural poor, particularly women and young children.

Estimating individual feed intake of fish held in groups has long been a challenge precluding precise knowledge of the individual variation of feed efficiency (FE) in fish. In this study, counts of the number of feed pellets (1.63 mg on average) eaten by individual tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) held in 8 mixed sex groups of 15 fish were measured from video recordings made over a period of 10 days where fish were fed twice daily to achieve compensatory growth after 10 days of fasting.

The present study aimed to map the presence of cages and to profile the socio-economic characteristics of their owners in Lake Victoria Basin Kenya as baseline information to aid in the formation of policies to manage the integration of capture and culture fisheries.

The roles of homestead ponds and surrounding dike production of vegetables on farms in peri-urban and rural communities in central north Bangladesh were assessed. The study supports the view that small homestead ponds can contribute to the wider food supply, and that such “quasi-peasant” forms of aquaculture contribute to reduced poverty and enhanced dietary diversity and food security in the broader population.

Egyptian fish farms have faced unexplained mortality of tilapia during the summer months in recent years. Epidemiological surveys indicated that 37% of fish farms were affected in 2015 with an average mortality rate of 9.2% and a potential economic impact of around US$ 100 million. Despite a number of researchers and organizations investigating potential causes results so far have been inconclusive. The aim of this study was to identify the effect of various production factors on the incidence of disease outbreaks in Egyptian pond based aquaculture.

Three strains of African catfish (Clarias gariepinus) from the Netherlands (Dutch), Indonesia and Kenya (Lake Victoria) were studied in hatchery conditions to compare their fecundity, growth performance and survival rates.

This is a poster presentation on WorldFish Research in Fish Feeds and Nutrition at the 18th International Symposium on Fish Nutrition and Feeding (ISFNF 2018), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, June 3rd-7th, 2018. (Poster number 2.46)