USSEC Holds Aquaculture Nutrition & Statistical Modeling Workshop

USSEC held an aquaculture nutrition and statistical modeling workshop in Pattaya, Thailand October 17-19. Participants from Southeast Asia feed companies in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam participated.
Feed companies’ R&D not only focuses on nutrition and feed technology, but also on topics such as nutritional specifications, feeding practices, and feed comparison experiments. Feed companies normally create a feeding table for feeding where the feeding rate is based on the body weight of fish in every stage of growth. This technique needs to be reviewed, because feeding rate greatly depends on the growth of every animal and water temperature. These topics were the focus of the workshop.
The workshop provided an introduction to mathematical modeling applied to aquaculture production. Participants were required to bring their own data for course assignments, from which they will were trained in basic skills that will allow them to audit the quality of data collected from their daily work.
“NRC [National Research Council] is not a bible. Try to use modeling for your own specification,” said Dr. Dominique Bureau, University of Guelph - Canada.

USSEC and Vietnamese participants at Modeling Workshop (Left to right): Khoa, Toàn, Nguyên