Feature
FARMING FOR THE FUTURE Helping Asian fish and shrimp farmers to help themselves is the aim of critical research being led by scientists at the University of Southampton. Life is tough for fish and shrimp farmers in India and Bangladesh. Disease is a real and constant threat to their crops. And when it strikes it can be disastrous. A £2.1 million project led in the UK by Chris Hauton, Professor of Marine Ecophysiology at the National Oceanography Centre, is helping these farmers towards a brighter future through education about prevention and control of disease outbreaks.
farmers and launching a mobile phone app to help them. This disruptive technology is particularly appropriate for remote farmers in rural Bangladesh, where 97% of the population have and use mobile phones. Understanding diseases The current diseases farmers in India and Bangladesh battle are global diseases that are not infectious for humans.
The project, entitled Poverty Alleviation through Control of Disease in Asian Aquaculture, has seen socioeconomists, epidemiologists and specialists in immunology and disease pathology come together – and has resulted in some fantastic outputs to help towards food security and poverty alleviation. Outlining the big picture, Chris said: “There are worrying forecasts of how we are going to feed the planet in 2050 when the population is predicted to exceed nine billion. I have heard recent estimates that if we do nothing to combat disease in aquaculture, everything we currently grow, we will be losing through disease outbreaks by 2050.”
But he added: “The reality is that these are just two diseases of many. We actually believe that there is currently little point in trying to tackle one disease at a time – if we remove one, another will come along. So we have been trying to approach the problem differently – can we simply improve the health of the crop, so that it is less stressed and more able to fight infection?” Prevention through education To help farmers fight diseases, the Indian government has produced guidance on how to grow fish and shrimp.
Fish farming
But attempting to control disease in shrimp and fish farming is almost impossible. “They are farmed in open ponds,” explained Chris. “The ponds are open to birds, crustaceans and other animals which move between the ponds – it’s a very difficult system to control through biosecurity.”
Epizootic Ulcerative Syndrome, or EUS, is a common fish disease that causes lesions – but some species are resistant. “The common carp is resistant to EUS and can kill it off,” said Chris. “But the Asian species, the Rohu, is susceptible. So we have been comparing the immune systems of the two to see if we can understand mechanisms of resistance.”
Part of the research project has been studying common fish and shrimp diseases, while another part has involved educating the local
In shrimp, a major disease is caused by White Spot Syndrome Virus. In this case, the project has been comparing the immune response
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of freshwater prawns, which seem robust to infection with the virus, and the Pacific white shrimp, which is very susceptible to infection. “Again, we have been trying to understand the different host pathogen interactions,” said Chris.
“It’s good advice,” said Chris, “but farmers do not always necessarily use it because following the best available practice has cost implications – it requires them to look after the animals in a particular way. We have worked with a group of farmers in Nellore village, Andhra Pradesh – the largest shrimp farming state in India. We were able to demonstrate that if they followed the advice, they got better crop returns. For three crops in a row working with us, they have doubled their production and have not had any disease outbreaks. That success has been seen by others and is spreading by word of mouth.” In Bangladesh, however, farmers have very little support or formal training.