A seminar on the development of feed preparation for freshwater aquaculture and ensuring the protection of aquatic animal health was held in Ashgabat at the “Archabil” hotel.

The participants included representatives of three ministries – agriculture, environmental protection, and finance and economy. The speakers were consultants on aquaculture and fisheries of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – Haydar Fersoy and Tom Shipton. This was reported by “Turkmenistan: Golden Age”.

Part of the scientific exchange were issues of increasing fish production based on farms and nurseries, which is associated with access to environmentally safe, economically balanced - at a reasonable and affordable price - high-quality feed. It was of interest to producers to learn which feed additives optimize growth, are a prerequisite for increasing the yield of products without saturating them with undesirable chemical compounds that can harm human health, as well as how to reduce production costs and risks, improve the economic return of fish farms.

Information was also provided on issues of maintaining growing conditions, fish health and general sanitary biosafety of the aquatic environment and the entire farm space.

The speakers presented methods for maintaining fish health, diagnosing diseases, ensuring biological safety in pools and other related laboratory facilities of industrial nurseries. An overview of the current state of aquaculture development in Turkmenistan was useful.

Today, in the country, in addition to the state structure for catching and processing fish, including Caspian sprat, there are private small forms of fish production - farms, producers of valuable algae based on natural brines, private fishing cooperatives, family associations, where small volumes of the caught catch are processed in a handicraft manner based on the relevant certificates, the source notes.