Fish, plants, phytohormones, beneficial bacteria, aquaculture and hydroponics. This project has it all!

John Allwright Fellow, Jonathan Mangmang, is completing his PhD at the University of Sydney under the supervision of Dr Gordon Rogers and Rosalind Deaker. Jonathan is on secondment from Visayas State University, Philippines where he worked on an ACIAR-funded protected vegetable cropping project. He is interested in more efficient and sustainable food production system, particularly in the integration of beneficial microbes in aquaponics vegetable production.

Source: Jonathan Mangmang

Are fisheries important?

World Fisheries Day (21 November) is celebrated throughout the world by fishing communities. Dr Chris Barlow, Fisheries Research Program Manager with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), provides a few fisheries facts about Australia and nearby countries. Images in this post were extracted from ACIAR's Fisheries Program project profiles 2012 summary.

Fisheries is one program of work within ACIAR. Why fisheries? After all, when most of us in Australia think of fisheries, we think of recreational fishers—those brave souls who spend countless hours by the sea, rivers and lakes, catching (but most often not catching—at least that is my experience) fish.

A big Bass caught in Papua New Guinea

Sure, we have some commercial fisheries too, but their economic importance in Australia is much less than livestock and cropping. 

Grow-your-own sea cucumbers

Sea cucumbers have a high market value both as a food and a medicine in China and other parts of Asia. These sausage-shaped marine invertebrates have for centuries been collected in the shallow waters of the Pacific and South-East Asia. However, overexploitation in recent decades has left wild populations of sea cucumbers greatly depleted.

Since wild sea cucumbers have become hard to come by, there has been a growing interest in producing them using aquaculture techniques.

A new ACIAR publication, ‘Asia-Pacifictropical sea cucumber aquaculture’, brings together the Proceedings of a symposium held in New Caledonia last year, organised by ACIAR, together with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community. The publication includes a wealth of new research on aquaculture techniques, as well as reviewing hatchery production, sea-ranching, export markets and tenure issues. 

Priorities for Indian agricultural development

One of India’s most senior agricultural research leaders presented a seminar on the country’s research priorities in a seminar in Canberra earlier this year.

While the visit was a few months back, the presentation has been in such high demand that another mention wont hurt.

Seminar icar challenges ayyappan_180112

View more presentations from ACIAR

Fish farm future for PNG

A/Professor Jes Sammut (c), with lead farmer Mr A1 (r) who is fostering aquaculture technologies with other farmers in the Eastern Highlands Province (Photo: Cathy Hair)

The experience of ACIAR project leader Dr Jes Sammut helping people in Papua New Guinea grow fish inland, is featured in the February edition of the Qantas ‘Australian Way’ magazine in a story about scientists working in remote locations.

The Associate Professor at the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of New South Wales travels to a range of locations in the Western, Eastern Highlands and Morobe provinces of PNG on a regular basis.

The bivalve mollusc

When I think of oysters I think of The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll, which is this poem about a walrus and a carpenter who go for a stroll on the beach one sunny night, and trick some naive oysters into joining them, only to eat them. In real life this probably wouldn’t happen. I’m not sure if oysters are really that sentient.

Oysters are filter feeders. They feed on particles in the water, leaving the surrounding water particle-free. This results in oysters being quite environmentally friendly. Pollutants such as sediment and algae are either eaten by the oysters, or shaped into small packets that are deposited on the bottom of the sea where they are harmless.

Mr Chau Ngoc Hong, from the Quang Ninh province in Vietnam is also quite a fan of oysters. He is a farmer involved in an ACIAR project to build bivalve hatchery production capacity in Vietnam. The program has had an amazing economic and social impact on his life.

“With oyster farming, my family had money
to build a boat as a transport means,
moving goods and materials for oyster farming,”
said Mr Hong.