[March 24, 2011]

NCKU to Transfer Indoor Grouper Fingerling Hatching Technology

National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Tainan City and Taipei-based Merit Ocean Biotech Inc. signed a technology transfer license agreement to promote mass production of high-quality and disease-free grouper fingerlings in Taiwan on March 24^th.

"Grouper is the most valuable fish in Oriental fish market because of their favor and rarity and it has been selected as the main development item of our national aquaculture program," said Prof. Huey-Lang Yang, Director of NCKU's University Center for Bioscience and Biotechnology.

"However, in Taiwan and neighboring south Asian countries, grouper fingerling production has suffered a major catastrophe of severe viral infection resulted from the past intensive and careless farming behavior."

Yang added, "As healthy fingerling is the key for a sustainable grouper aquaculture industry, the rearing condition, nutrition requirement and disease prevention are the key elemets for the successful production of healthy fingerlings."

Led by Prof. Huey-Lang Yang, a research team of approximately 40 research personnel, with 5 principle investigators, assistants and graduate students at National Cheng Kung University, has spent over 10 years to develop a total solution for a highly reproducible grouper hatching system, the so-called High Pathogen Resistant Grouper Fingerling Rearing System.

According to Yang, methods such as vaccines and diagnostics were developed to manage the viral epidemic in the first 4 years. In the subsequent 6 years, with the design and construction of a pilot scale virus-free grouper hatchery on campus, a further study of the larvae rearing conditions, such as the step by step analysis of chemical, physical and nutritious requirement of larvae rearing, was made possible.

The long-period process overall facilitated the development of a standard operating procedure of disease-free grouper fingerlings.

Strictly abiding the SOP, over 40 consecutively successful fingerling productions were achieved in the virus-free hatchery, demonstrating the success of the new technology for the production of healthy grouper fingerlings.

In addition to the 100% reproducible production, this rearing system can produce 2,000 grouper fingerlings per ton of water, which is 100 times over the current density of traditional earth pond hatcheries, and the fingerlings have reached an 80% survival rate in field tests.

The technology transfer between NCKU and Merit Ocean Biotech Inc. will help Taiwanese agriculturalists to produce high-quality groupers and achieve the best profits under the ECFA framework. It will also transform Taiwan's aquaculture into a refined green industry contributing to the basis of sustainable agricultural development.

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