Viet Uc Seafood is making progress with its first pangasius breeding project in the Mekong Delta, with a goal of producing the next generation of broodstock in 2021, the company said in a statement.
Currently, Viet-Uc has already produced the second generation of pangasius broodstock from its hatchery in An Giang Province. The third generation of broodstock is expected to be produced in July next year, which will grow between 8 percent and 10 percent faster than the second generation, Viet-Uc Deputy Director Nguyen Cong Can said.
Widely known as the country’s largest supplier of shrimp postlarvae, Viet-Uc is working to improve pangasius breeding techniques to help raise fish survival rates and quality, Nguyen said.
Viet-Uc Controlling Director Vu Duc Tri told SeafoodSource in February 2019 the company planned to provide the market with the first fingerlings from the project beginning in July 2019. However, a company representative confirmed to SeafoodSource on 5 November no commercial fingerlings from the hatchery have yet been sold.
The company’s delay in the provision of the fingerlings to the market came as the pangasius industry experienced hard times in 2019, stretching into this year. Material prices have been kept at low levels, while export values have fallen due to low demand from key markets.
Viet-Uc began selecting first-parent pangasius for the project in 2016 and opened the 100-hectare farm in December 2018. The farm has a capacity of one billion pangasius fingerlings per year and was constructed with a solar panel array to provide it a cheaper, more renewable energy source.
The project is part of the country’s three-tier cooperation plan for production of high-quality pangasius breeds in the Mekong Delta, home to most of Vietnam’s pangasius farming. The plan, scheduled to run through 2025, was approved by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in March 2018. The scheme is expected to produce about half of the Mekong Delta’s estimated demand of between 2.2 billion to 2.5 billion high-quality fingerlings a year by 2020, which will be raised to between 2.5 billion to three billion high-quality fingerlings a year – 100 percent of the delta’s expected demand – by 2050.
Photo courtesy of Toan Dao/SeafoodSource
