Savants eye better-yielding tilapia

Once considered as the poor man's fish, tilapia is now the fish of the future.

Westly Rosario, officer in charge of the National Integrated Fisheries Technology Development Center in Bonuan, Binlac here, said they are ready to distribute saline tilapia which was the product of their experimentation in collaboration with CIRAD, a French research organization and the Department of Science and Technology.

The experimentation formally started January last year, although there were earlier attempts in 1997.

With the problem on luminous bacteria affecting shrimps that led to the downfall of the shrimp industry, the project enabled them to produce green water to prevent infestation of these bacteria, Rosario said.

He said that the country has so much brackish water areas totalling about 200,000 hectares nationwide and another 230,000 hectares potential aquaculture areas with brackish water.

"But the problem is we do not have so much supply of bangus and other fish species. With the saline tilapia, we hope we can fill in the gap," Rosario said.

Using hybridization of the molobicus, the technology aimed to produce saline tilapia that grow very well as well as tolerate high saline waters.

This year, the center is ready to distribute for field testing about 500,000 to one million saline tilapia. He said they hope to triple their production for distribution next year.

The market profitability of tilapia is good as it can spawn about 300-3,000 eggs every 20 days up to one month, Rosario said.

With its bright prospect in the market tilapia will eventually become the fish of the future, Rosario said.

Those wanting to avail of the saline tilapia fingerlings supply for experimentation can get for free here but for individual farmers, they can get their supply at a goodwill price of 25 centavos each fingerling.

The fingerlings are sex-reversed all male because male tilapia grows two to three times faster than their female counterparts, Rosario said.

For them to produce sex-reversed all-male tilapia, Rosario said," We put them in a tank and feed them with male hormone testosterone mixed with methyl alcohol."

This methyl testosterone feeding enabled them to produce 99+ percent sure male fingerling.