Research and Extension

Strengthen the Land Grant cooperative extension services.

Farms require aquaculture extension specialists who possess in-depth familiarity with individual farms and have nurtured close working relationships with the farming community.  Aquaculture extension specialists:

• Provide R & D assistance, runs research yield verification trials on farms to verify that research results will hold up under commercial conditions.
• Are actively engaged with the aquaculture research community to ensure that the researchers focus their proposals and research programs on real, applied problems.
• Assist farmers to understand regulations and anticipate regulatory changes.

USDA’s role in strengthening extension services to aquaculture would be to hold frank discussions with land-grant universities related to increasing base extension support for aquaculture producers, especially in major aquaculture-producing states, with priority given to extension programming, not grant writing.

Aquatic animal selection and domestication

Achieve the complex goals of improved growth, health and yield within different production systems using agricultural biotechnology (traditional selection, hybridization, or genetic modification) that may include sterility to reduce environmental risk or achieve desirable growth and yield characteristics.

• Candidate species evaluation
• Production system domestication optimizing growth, health, and yield through
  • Selection
  • Hybridization.
  • Sterility
  • Genetic modification

Aquatic animal selection and domestication to achieve the complex goals of improved growth, health (including disease resistance) and yield within different production systems using agricultural biotechnology (traditional selection, hybridization, or genetic modification) that may include sterility to reduce environmental risk or achieve desirable growth and yield characteristics.

Aquatic Animal Health Management

Encompasses animal physiology, farm management, diagnostic and treatment options, health professional education and training, life stage nutrition and feed quality, optimizing plant derived nutrition, epidemiology, and risk management (farm and livestock insurance).

• Health management:
  • Farm management
  • Veterinarian and fish health professional – education and training
  • Therapeutant development and testing – vaccines and medicines
    • Anti-microbial risk assessment
  • Risk management:
    • Insurance
    • Pathogen horizon scanning
    • Zoonotic pathogens
• Animal Nutrition:
  • Live feeds – larval nutrient delivery system
  • Nutrient retention
  • Palatability
  • Production system specific feeds
  • Life stage specific feeds
  • Plant-based feed optimization