Aquaculture program at AIT started in 1981. Since then there was a culture of designing projects and raising funds to implement on-station and on-farm research projects. AIT's aquaculture was established with the support of ODA (Overseas Development Agency) of UK, now it is DFID (Department of Internaitional Development). Since then, other donors followed such as USAID (Pond dymanics/CRSP), DANIDA (curriculum development), SIDA (Outreach programs) and so on. Later on more projects were funded by various donors such as European Union, IDRC, GTZ, WorldFish (Formerly, ICLARM), and others.

With these projects and along with students thesis reserach, waste-water fed aquaculture, integrated farming, fertilization techniques and green water pond culture, hapa nursing, sex-reveral of tilapia fry, hapa breeding, technologies were developed. A lot of efforts were also made to transfer these technologies to the communities establishing outreach centres in north east of Thailand, Cambodia, Lao PDR, and northern and southern Vietnam contributing to food and nutrition security of the rural communities.

Our on-going and past projects have tremendously contributed to SDGs especailly Goals 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 14 and 17. Development and exchange programs related to high quality education, research, training, and community development are fully aligned to these goals. We continue to lead in this sector and contribute to the UN's sustainable goals. This webpage along with others, serve as evidences of what we do.

 



Curriculum development program:

AIT has played very prominent role in curriculum and institutional capacity development in addition to individual's skill in Indochina or Mekong region especially Cambodia, Loas, Thailand and Vietnam. Building on this, Aqua-Centre is expanding AIT's activities in Myanamar, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and even to Afrian countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia and so on. A number of projects in the past were implemented supporting thousands of teachers and students of universities and colleges have benefitted. Amongs the projects, EU supported Asia Link program with curriculum devleopment started since 2005-2008 and the second phase was from 2008-2010. More recent one is the curriculum development for Sustainable Seafood and Nutrition Security (SSNS) which is funded under Erasmus+ programme for three years (Oct 2017- Oct 2020). A total of 13 partners (4 from Europe and 9 from Asia) work together with the purpose of developing MSc curricula on Sustainable Seafood and Nutrition Security.

Teacher's training program (November 26-29, 2020) in Vietnam as a part of curriculum development for Sustainable Seafood and Nutrition (SSNS) project funded by Erasmus+ programme of the European Union

Strategic focus on tilapia farming and its promotion:

One of the remarkable technologies developed at AIT and commercialized is the tilapia hatchery technology. A series of research trials were conduced to select the incubation jars such as coke bottles, white water bottles, locally-made fibre glass jars, etc., comparing breeding systems such as traditional pond method, tanks, and hapas. Atempts were made to commercialize the technology. Nam Sai Farms International is one of the most successful tilapia hatchery project which started in 1994 signing a 5- year agreement with AIT. Due to its success, few private entrepreneurs started to adopt, and more people starting learning through training programme and technical assistance. As a result, there are thousands of tilapia hatcheries around the world including in Bangladesh (>500), Thailand (>100), Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Kenya, Zambia, Uganda, Mozambique, Nigeria, Mali, etc. Due to tilapia farming technologies, AIT is well-known in aquaculture sector around the globe, especially among the tilapia farmers. 

Through these efforts, it was well-established fact that aquaculture is easy to do and profitable as compared to most of the other sub-sectors of agriculture. Most fishes are white meat and the best protein as they contain all the amino acids required by human and othe ranimals. Malnutrition can be solved if rural families grow fish even in a small ponds of 200 m2 with stocking 400-500 fish which they can eat few fish every week. Therefore, one farmers one pond should be hte slogan for rural village. We implement model fish farms and villages to show other farmers and train.

In some countries and some parts witin each country, aquaculture has taken off. It createed plenty of jobs, for exmple, 100-200 staff are normally employed by a single tilapia hatchery. Thousands of women work in a single factory in Pangasius processing plant in Vietnam. Feed industry well developed which employs many people for raw matter acquisition, in feed making process and transportation of feed to farmers.

Fast growing aquaculture is facing several challenges of sustainability, checmical use and pollution caused by industrial development. Therefore, recent research projects are to contribute to the sustainable development of aquacutlure and fisheries management. Continued research and development of tilapia farming; low-cost hatchery technology, hapa nursing, and green water grow-out systems are still the major areas. Others areas include use of phytogenic compunds in fish feed, use of insect meal to replace fishmeal, alternative to MT hormone for sex-reversal of tilapia fry, use of local vegetables aquaponic system combining nursing and hatchery systems.

Nam Sai Farm Tilapia hatchery which was established with a joint agreement to use AIT technology. There are 7 units like this as shown above which produce over 20 million monosex fry per month.

This technology has been well taken up by the private sector as a good business. It is spreading all over the world as shown in the map beolw; starting from Fiji, Papuwa New Guinea, East Timor, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Nigeria, Mali,  Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and others.

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