Success Stories in Asian Aquaculture

The stories presented in this book reflect the unique nature of Asian aquaculture, providing first-time insight into how and why it has become so successful. Overall, the book demonstrates how the resiliency, adaptability, and innovation of small-scale aquaculture farmers have been crucial to this success. It also places aquaculture development in Asia into a wider global context, and describes its relationship to natural systems, social conditions, and economics. The book is unique in its in-depth presentation of primary research on Asian aquaculture, and in demonstrating how aquaculture can have a lasting positive impact on livelihoods, food security, and sustainable development

A global perspective of aquaculture in the new millennium

In modern times, not many primary industries have consistently recorded high yearly growth over a period of two decades. Aquaculture has sustained a global growth, continues to grow, and is expected to increasingly fill the shortfall in aquatic food products resulting from static or declining capture fisheries and population increase well into the year 2025. Its further growth and development will have to occur under a different socio-economic milieu in the new millennium. The basic paradigm changes will be from an increased production at almost any cost, to a sustainable increase in production with minimal environmental perturbations. Despite such paradigm changes, aquaculture will increasingly contribute to food security, poverty alleviation and social equity. The contribution of aquaculture to world food supply of aquatic products has been increasing over the past 10 years, in comparison to capture fisheries, growing from 15 to 28 percent of total production between 1988 and 1997. As the bulk of aquaculture is rural and subsistence, it plays a major role as a provider of direct and indirect employment to the rural poor and, thereby, to poverty alleviation. In many developing countries, aquaculture provides opportunities for diversification on agriculture farms and productive use to otherwise idle land during certain seasons. The main cause for the upsurge in the sector has been the transformation of aquaculture from an &ldquo;art&rdquo; form to a &ldquo;science&rdquo;. This brought many advantages, ranging from less dependence on wild stock to the development of techniques that optimized yields, such as polyculture, or enabled the achievement of high yields with low inputs. Two major developments also enabled the sector to maintain growth momentum, appropriate institutional frameworks and concerted research and development. Regions or continents have many commonalities. These include the predominance of finfish among the cultivated species, and the predominance of species that feed lower in the food chain, although shrimp, which does not naturally feed high in the trophic level but is mostly reared on artificial feed, has become a significant culture commodity. Notable differences, however, include the fact that all regions, except Africa and the countries of the former USSR, have recorded a significant increase in per capita production between 1984 and 1997. While Asia continues to dominate world aquaculture in overall tonnage, as well as in every major commodity, South America has registered a very high (72.8 percent) average annual growth between 1984 and 1997. The global and regional trends over the last 20 years in the sector from a number of perspectives, such as production trends, contribution of aquaculture to aquatic food consumption etc., are evaluated. Based on these different trends and in the light of changing socio-economic conditions globally, and in particular, in developing nations, the potential changes in the sector in the new millennium are highlighted. Finally, projections are made for the next 20 years, where opportunities, constraints and strategies for achieving the targets are presented and discussed.<br /

Fish oil in aquaculture : in retrospect

The use of fish oils by aquaculture is the key impediment on the future growth and sustainability of the industry. Fish oil, the key provider of health-beneficial omega-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, fluctuates drastically in supply and cost, and is extracted unsustainably from world oceans. Resultantly, its persistent use has fueled a heated global debate and sparked a generation of research focus into possible means of reducing the aquaculture industry\u27s dependence on this resource. This chapter introduces the subject of fish oil usage in aquaculture on a global basis, and briefly traces the history of related issues. Accordingly, the major fish species utilized for fish meal and fish oil production are traced and the chemical and nutritional characteristics of fish oils of different origins are provided. The future expected availability of fish oil for aquaculture and the sustainability of the reduction industry are subsequently discussed.<br /

Responsible aquaculture and trophic level implications to global fish supply

Hunger and malnutrition remain among the most devastating problems facing the world&rsquo;s poor and needy, and continue&nbsp;to dominate the health and well-being of the world&rsquo;s poorest nations. Moreover, there are growing doubts as to the long-term sustainability of many existing food production systems, including capture fisheries and aquaculture, to meet the future increasing global demands.Of the different agricultural food production systems, aquaculture (the farming of aquatic animals and plants) is widely viewed as an important weapon in the global fight against malnutrition and poverty, particularly within developing countries where over 93% of global production is currently produced, providing in most instances an affordable and a much needed source of high quality animal protein, lipids, and other essential nutrients. The current article compares for the first time the development and growth of the aquaculture sector and capture fisheries by analyzing production by mean trophic level. Whereas marine capture fisheries have been feeding the world on high trophic level carnivorous fish species since mankind has been fishing the oceans, aquaculture production within developing countries has focused, by and large, on the production of lower trophic level species. However, like capture fisheries, aquaculture focus within economically developed countries has been essentially on the culture of high value-, high trophic level-carnivorous species. The long term sustainability of these production systems is questionable unless the industry can reduce its dependence upon capture fisheries for sourcing raw materials for feed formulation and seed inputs. In line with above, the article calls for the urgent need for all countries to adopt and adhere to the principles and guidelines for responsible aquaculture of the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries

Guardiões da Comunidade Tanque Novo (Casa Nova-BA).

Esse trabalho teve como objetivo identificar os guardiões de variedades locais da Comunidade Tanque Novo, em Casa Nova?BA. A metodologia consistiu na aplicação de ferramentas participativas e questionários com agricultores familiares. Foi registrada a existência de 21 guardiões de 78 variedades locais, conservadas há pelo menos 10 anos, de abóbora (1), capim (10), feijão (10), leucena (2), mandioca (29), melancia (13), milho (5) e palma forrageira (8). Constatou-se que 79,5% das sementes tiveram como origem os parentes, amigos ou vizinhos e que as principais utilizações são para alimentação da família e de animais

O conhecimento local e o potencial de coleta de lianas produtoras de fibras nos municípios de Pedra Branca do Amapari e Porto Grande/AP, com ênfase ao cipó-tititca (Heteropsis spp - Araceae).

O cipó é a matéria prima mais utilizada pelos artesãos na fabricação de móveis e artesanato, tanto no Amapá, como em outros estados brasileiros. O Objetivo foi verificar a freqüência de planta da família Araceae com potencial de produção de fibras e entrevistas com artesãos, agroextratores, extratores, comunitários e estudante sobre o nível de conhecimento da comunidade envolvida sobre o manejo de cipós naquela região. Verificou-se que existem 7 espécies que os coletores denominam popularmente de cipó-titica, a saber: Heteropsis steyermarkii, H. salicifolia, H. tenuispadix, spruceana, H. mellinonii, H. linearis e H. flexuosa, sendo esta, a espécie com o maior índice de ocorrência no levantamento. Das 984 plantas da família Araceae inventariadas, 32.24% eram de plantas produtoras de fibras denominadas de cipó-titica. Em relação à quantidade de cipó coletado, 71.42% dos entrevistados afirmaram que chegam a coletar mais de 50 kg/dia, e 222% afirmaram que essa coleta, feita durante todo ano. É necessário observar a época de corte da liana, para se pensar na viabilidade do manejo. para a manutenção de indivíduos jovens, garantindo assim, a recuperação das espécies no período em que ocorre o déficit hídrico

Semantic-Functional Communications in Cyber-Physical Systems

This paper explores the use of semantic knowledge inherent in the cyber-physical system (CPS) under study in order to minimize the use of explicit communication, which refers to the use of physical radio resources to transmit potentially informative data. It is assumed that the acquired data have a function in the system, usually related to its state estimation, which may trigger control actions. We propose that a semantic-functional approach can leverage the semantic-enabled implicit communication while guaranteeing that the system maintains functionality under the required performance. We illustrate the potential of this proposal through simulations of a swarm of drones jointly performing remote sensing in a given area. Our numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method offers the best design option regarding the ability to accomplish a previously established task -- remote sensing in the addressed case -- while minimising the use of radio resources by controlling the trade-offs that jointly determine the CPS performance and its effectiveness in the use of resources. In this sense, we establish a fundamental relationship between energy, communication, and functionality considering a given end application

Avaliação da qualidade de Banana Passa elaborada a partir de variedades resistentes à Sigatoka-Negra.

A banana (Musa spp.) é uma fruta de grande importância econômica para o Brasil e para outros países. Possui elevado valor nutricional e é altamente perecível, o que dificulta a comercialização do fruto in natura levando a grandes perdas após o seu amadurecimento (BORGES et al., 2010). A desidratação é uma alternativa interessante para reduzir tais perdas, pois prolonga a vida-de-prateleira dos frutos, agrega valor ao produto e é de fácil aplicação, sendo uma excelente oportunidade de negócio para as agroindústrias de frutas (MOTA, 2005; BORGES et al., 2010)