USSEC Hosts Aquaculture Seminar in Korea
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- General News
USSEC hosted an aquaculture seminar in Pusan, Korea on September 26. This program focused on improving the feeding practices of target flounder growers who switched to protein meal-based extruded feed from fish-based moist feed. Some of these target flounder growers have seen an increased rate of fish mortality, which is due to farmers feeding more of the protein meal-based extruded feed than required. Participants included twenty-seven staff members in charge of research and development, purchasing, marketing or quality control from nine local feed companies producing extruded feed for fish; four feed ingredient suppliers active in the aqua sector; local fisheries cooperatives; and the national government-run fisheries institute.
Five major topics were discussed at this seminar including: the evaluation of soybean meal and soy protein concentrate as an ingredient for aqua feed, presented by In Soo Shin, USSEC Aquaculture Utilization Technical Director - Korea; the prospect of supply and demand of soybean meal and fish meal, presented by Chi Young Kim of the Korea Feed Association (KFA); quality survey of soybean and fish meals, presented by Hong Sik Moon from KFA; examples of feeding practices being adopted by flounder growers, presented by Sat Byol Heo of Chungyang Fisheries; and suggestions to improve feeding practices of extruded feed in flounder, presented by Sung Chul Bae of Pukyong National University.
USSEC suggested a guideline on the daily feeding rates of extruded feed according to fish sizes of 5-10 grams, 20-50 grams, 100-300 grams and over 400-500 grams and the optimum inclusion rates of soybean meal and soy protein concentrate in such diets substituting up to 30% and 50% of fish meal respectively, in reference to feeding studies done by the United Soybean Board (USB).