Source : New Straits Time
Hybrid fish to 'save' seafood sector
10 Feb 2007


Courtesy of NST

KOTA KINABALU: A hybrid species of grouper, or "sak pan" in Chinese, has been developed, which will have great commercial value and help to bring the seafood industry closer to its target for the future.

The new species is a cross between the giant grouper (Epinephelus lanceolatus) and the tiger grouper (Epine-phelus fuscoguttatus), both of which are high-value species in great consumer demand.

The fish was jointly developed by Universiti Malaysia Sabah's Borneo Marine Research Institute (BMIT), the Fisheries Development Authority of Malaysia (LKIM) and Kinki University Japan.

BMIT director Prof Dr Saleem Mustafa said the new species will relieve the pressure on the wild grouper due to overfishing and other illegal fishing methods.

"We are looking at helping to find solutions to the increasing demand, versus shrinking supply, of the industry through aquaculture," he said.

A consignment of 2,000 four-month-old fish will be distributed to local fish breeders and farmers through LKIM.

The juvenile fish cost RM15 per fish now, but a fully grown one can sell for RM120 a kilogramme at full market price, said Saleem, adding that the species' full growth potential is not known yet.

"It has been well-received, and it will benefit the industry as well as help with the conservation of the species.

"Cross-breeding combines the best qualities of both parent fish, hence the premium price," he said, adding that there are plans to sell the fish on the global market.

The target for aquaculture production in the country 400,000 tonnes per year by 2010, and the current level of production is 110,000 tonnes.

"Traditional methods cannot achieve this, so a great deal of effort needs to be put into research and development to increase yield," he said, adding that the new grouper is a step in this direction.

This post has been edited by ParaOpticaL: Feb 13 2007, 07:31 PM

Update before CNY

The Star


Home-grown square melons to be on sale soon

Would you pay RM68 or RM88 for a sweet melon? It'll probably be a worthwhile buy if the said fruit is a square melon embossed with the word "Fook" (Chinese for prosperity), especially during an auspicious time like the Chinese New Year.

About 500 such melons are planted on the rooftop of Iris Corporation Berhad's Capillary AgroTech (M) Sdn Bhd in Technology Park.

"It's a research and development effort by our company to bring up the value of our produces for our farmers," said general manager Chia King Hong.

What a novelty: Chia holding two Golden Prosperity Melons, one still in its mould while the other will be attractively packed as a festive gift.
"We took the cue from the square watermelon produced in Japan. The project was started about six months ago and is still run on a small scale," he said.

The square melons will be launched into the market with a bang during Hari Raya or Christmas this year, he said.

A sweet melon is sold at between RM8 and RM10 at supermarkets. The company plans to sell the produce, which will be packaged attractively as festive gifts, at between RM68 and RM88.

But, you will have to wait if you are interested.

All 500 melons have been reserved by the company's employees and corporate partners.

Chia said there was not much sophisticated technology involved.

"When the fruits are still small, we put them into transparent moulds, of which one side is engraved with words or pictures, and they will grow according to their moulds," he explained.

With a lot of effort and a dash of creativity, here comes the Malaysian-made "Golden Prosperity Melon".

Well done, para, I am way more then impressed. Thanks for putting all the info together. And good job in hosting and keep the topic burning.

As usual I am having funny thoughts in my mind, just yet to turn it into serious business. There are several research I need to carry out:

- soiless farming: cost, pruduction, crop price, material, method, location, manpower.

soiless means no soil, for example the strawberries farms in cameron or a hypotonic farm in a green house. The chili news para posted is one of the example. This should mean less hassle as you do not need to deal with dirt. Kinda suit the city lazy folks like me.

Cost should be higher then traditional farming, as you need to purchase every drop of fertilizer and every piece of potting material. Plenty of stuff to carry around too, like planting your seedlings into the polyplastic. And also the dipping system, etc.

Production should be way higher then traditional farming if you are inside a green house. It is a matter of 14 tons (in open air) to 50 tons(in green house) difference (planting chili, according to a verbal source)

Usually you can learn all thouse method from your fertilizer/seed supplier, perhaps you can even try out some of your creativity as well.

Soiless means you do not need to depend on mother earth, as long as you have air, water and sunlight, you can even do it in a spaceship(certainly not economically viable thou).

Applying smart systems will shoot your budget like a firework, but it certainly wont go out in flames and smoke if you do it right. It is possible to limit the manpower to one self(me). For example, I heard about some german farm which only have 2 employees. The tractor driver, and the boss.

I am looking forward for the agenda, yes I am.

Let all begin to work on something meaningful before our employment life drag us into oblivion.

Happy CNY, gong xi gong xi.

YES THIS IS THE BEST THING U COULD DO.....next please learn the ropes from someone experience in the venture that you are going to start
-agri venture has a 50-50 risk ratio
- dont leave your day job unless you have other income
-if you are planting dont hope for the seeds from the gov better get it from else where
-everybody will have their own opinion in this field.
-your best bet is to get knowledge from experience people in the field.....

Para, you are rearing fish in tanks! Seem like one of the recent agriworld magazines have mentioned about this. I will bring all my magazines(2004-recent, time changed, but people will still grow the same thing ) if I attend the agenda. Just to have something to look at.

No worries about not understand any ancient characters you have me.

I have kept some vegetation in my condo, so in an attempt to prevent them from turning into fossile while im going off for CNY holiday, I have "did something to them", some sort of automatic watering system capable to supply them several days of water needs. No high tech terminator stuff here, the concept is there, not too sure if they actually works

So will try update you guys once I get back to the traffic jamming KL after next tuesday.

I am giving my pitaya plants some drought test, so they arnt getting any water for one whole dry week kekeke. Those who would like to do pitaya might find this info useful.

Regards. dongdongdongdongchiang

as jeffblazed said, in short, not asking for everything ready made, but look for the answer yourself, asking is simply one of the method.

This post has been edited by rexis: Feb 18 2007, 02:30 AM

i am not very keen into agriculture myself..but i had this friend who works in the department of agriculture..he did some consulting for my company...basicly he thought me what i know about agriculture because a few years back my singaporean partner was interested in doing an agriculture project Organic farming
and i looked around for some one experienced to do a viability study on this venture
so found this guy out.......
too bad he is not in lowyat net....may be if any of you are interested i could give you his email but i have to ask him first ok....

Hi there,

You may want to forward his contact to ParaOptical.

It's good to keep in touch with each other

rexis : yes please bring the Agri magazine if you have it with you. much appreciated it. please do come to the Meet up.

thank you for your compliments. hopefully i can get my stuff started next week.

jeffblazed : hope you can pass the contact to me. thank you.


This post has been edited by ParaOpticaL: Mar 1 2007, 12:08 PM

Update 1 week after CNY

The Base of Place for my Tanks





This post has been edited by ParaOpticaL: Mar 1 2007, 12:08 PM

where to find buyer for the fish?

let say rear grouper,

1 baby grouper = rm15. (from the news, the price of the baby grouper)we buy 1000.

cost:
wait for X month.
fish food for X month.
utility bil for X month.
how many fish died during X month.(do we have any insurance plan if our fish die?)
transport?
maintainance?
worker salary?
land rental?
water filter?

so, after X month i earn for 1000 fish n sell at rm50 each.(rm50 each can or not? coz the news say can sell rm100 each not sure about it)
i get return rm50K(without minus cost).

anyone can shed expected cost for this?
how to calculate how much space need to rear x no. of fish?
where to look for such information?

ParaOpticaL,
beside how much fish/prawn u can rear in your fish farm?
how much is your office setup cost?

This post has been edited by Humping^Panda: Mar 1 2007, 03:30 PM

Panda should be rearing freshwater fish, haha kiddings, I think the easiest way to find this out is to pay RM5950 for a full package of 25 days of courses including theories and practical (www.todayaqua.com) or a mere RM580 for 2 weekends (Sat and Sun) courses about almost anything you need to know and who to call in rearing fish, also, they provide many other agri short courses too, like the one i am planning to take, dipping system organic vegetables(03-21424046, call they to know what they have now).

Basically you can also get to know all these from some agriculture magazine like the one I have(unfortunately, I am unable to join the gathering @ taman congnaught).

Fish marketing - first ask yourself, where can you get fish? Pasar pagi, seafood restaurant, ikan bakar stall... yup, go ask whether they want to buy fish. As simple as that. Oh, and dont stop asking when 10/20 of them turn you down, keep on asking.

Fish Food - ask the vendor, usually they can provide some extra tips or information, how much, how frequent, etc. Also dont forget about all those supplyment to make your fish happier and healthier, fish food vendors will have an idea about them.

Utility bills - how big is your pool? What is your fish density? Electric or diesel engine? All these will justify your bills.

Fish Survival - Usually the fish seed vendor have a figure about how many % of your seed can reach adulthood, provided the proper condition of course, like outside pool or concrete pool? Or the circulation system Para mentioned? The later one surely can increase the survival rate. Also, keep the fish well fed can inprove the survival rate - otherwise some hungry fish species will eat their own kind.

Transport - Lori rental? Or purchase lorry yourself? With fridge or without. You prefer to look for vendors who go straight to your farm? Or you want to fetch your goods to the fish market for better price? Compare these, and compare with the fuel cost. Then you will have a rough figure.

Maintanence - (actually utility bill is part of maintanence)so are you doing two job? Or you planning to take care the farm yourself?

Worker - How big is your farm? Do you need a worker? How many worker?(refer above) Where are your farm(KL indon workers RM800 monthly, Kelantan local workers RM300 will do), you can try get one or two helpers and increase or decrease them when required.

land - rent or own land? Usually the land problem need to figure out yourself? Keep asking and looking is the key.

Water - salt water or fresh water? Surely you need a water source nearby, usually openair pools dont use filter, they simply change water. And surely its very tough to rear grouper in midland(though not impossible)! you would want somewhere near sea, or on sea.

Sorry, I dont have an exact numbers here. The above are barely some road signs, not destinations.

i have 5 big tanks and 1 small tanks

a) each big tank can rear approx 500 plate-size fish which roughly is totalling at 2500 fishes

b) the small tank can get you about approx 300 plate-size fish but the main function of the small tank is for PURGING so it makes the fish texture and taste better.

office setup depends on lots of things. basically $$$$
i got a hand cabin/container for around RM 4.5k (20' x 8')

anything else you want to know ?

This post has been edited by ParaOpticaL: Mar 2 2007, 09:07 AM

ParaOpticaL,

thanks alot! anyway, i need to do more research n budgetting bf i get invovle in any project. coz i m not like u mar...got FAMA.

by the way,
i tot normally ppl will sell the fish to org tgh then to the org tgh sell to market.

but from wat i knw from my fishmen cousin, now they doing it theirself.
they sell it directly rather go thru org tgh.but need to have small lari with tanks.
to bring your goods to the market n distribute.
the main reason ppl go thru org tgh coz some of them take large order.
i think they took sometime to get so many buyer.but they are not in this area. so the org tgh is not the same.

by the way, when you said your fish tanks can handle 2500 fish meaning full grown?wat plate size? :

anyway, i notice those in the tank grouper taste not nice compare to those fresh from sea. taste like mud. anyway the modern science counter this?

my reply in BLUE

ParaOpticaL,
FAMA = father mother sponser

yeah, fish farming or etc is very exp project.

hmmm...i think becoz of the water in the tanks lor.
but mark my word. it taste like mud. but i m not reffering to fish farming grouper. i mean those in restaurant grouper tht they put in tanks to keep them fresh n alive.if it is steam cook, it will taste like mud.
my really concern is tht will it taste like mud too if rear in pond or tanks.
just incase to do came across such studies during your research.

i assume the tanks you use is fiberglass?
how much per tanks cost?

org tgh, hmm...so i assume you figure out your market ady .

how you going to take your farm? u going full time to take care?
if not does the worker need alot training one inorder for them to be take care?

sorry asked u too much. not time to chat msn nowadays.

anyway, all the best.

my replies in blue

of course i tried before.in my place grouper is cheap.but only when i come to west malaysia the grouper here is super expensive n some of them taste like mud(not all).

hey sorry about the fama thingy. coz i tot u told me bf....maybe i remember wrongly.

maybe the method to raise grouper here not so established like in Sabah. A Sabah University Professor even asked me is i would like to go for attachment. i probably would take up the offer in the 2nd half of the year.

its ok. i am venturing into this business with the money i made from my other ventures.

are you residing in KL now? if yes would you like to come to our gathering this saturday.