Aquaculture disease management and dynamic dosing expert Aqua Pharma and microbial fingerprinting firm Kytos have announced a plan to jointly develop Seatru – a new service platform that will provide shrimp farmers with practical microbial control through precise dosing recommendations.
Aqua Pharma and Kytos will team up with Indonesian aquaculture tech start-up eFishery, which completed its Series B funding round in 2020, to launch a two-year research project to realize the initiative. The research project will run from July 2022 until mid-2024, with commercial scaling to follow.
Aqua Pharma Group Market Development Manager Markus Wu said Seatru will be able to reduce disease with precise dosing of eco-friendly health-management methods.
“Shrimp farmers are currently hampered by a lack of reliable data on water quality and animal health, resulting in frequent unpredictable disease outbreaks. Seatru will allow farmers to adopt a preventative management approach, using best-in-class products like Aqualisan to increase production, sustainability, and profitability,” Wu said.
Kytos Co-Founder and CEO Ruben Props said the company has expertise in microbial fingerprinting technology to push for sustainable aquaculture through precision farming.
“Together, our work on the Seatru concept is transforming aquaculture by researching and developing advanced technologies in microbial monitoring, animal gut health, disinfectant treatments, and artificial intelligence to create stable water conditions and ensure increased performance,” Props said.
eFishery CEO Gibran Huzaifah hopes SEATRU will bring shrimp farmers in Indonesia “peace of mind and the tools to produce a stable performance and improved harvests throughout the year.”
“Disease prevention is the number-one challenge facing shrimp aquaculture today. With disease able to completely wipe out a pond in five days, the sector urgently needs effective preventative methods. Innovative new pond-reading technologies combined with eco-friendly products like Aqualisan for shrimp pond management have huge potential to improve the welfare of the shrimp and the profitability of the sector,” Huzaifah said.
Photo courtesy of Kytos, Aqua Pharma, and eFishery
