Richard Newton, Wesley Malcorps and Poorva Jundre, together with other SAFE (SmartAqua4FuturE) project partners Prof. Remigiusz Panicz and Piotr Eljasik from the West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin (Poland) and Associate Professor Wenbo Zhang from Shanghai Ocean University, visited carp farms in the Chinese Province of Guangdong. The fieldwork was facilitated by Dr Zhang.
From left to right: Remigiusz Panicz, Wenbo Zhang, Richard Newton, Poorva Jundre, Piotr Eljasik, & Wesley Malcorps.
The team engaged with carp farmers and their polyculture systems. These farms are highly productive (average 20, sometimes up to 80 t/ha/yr) and combine various carp species and others to optimise resource efficiency. Despite having very different systems, they experience some of the same challenges as European freshwater aquaculture farms. Aim of this trip is knowledge exchange to learn about different strategies to improve sustainability and profitability.
The team also visited the Haid Group, which is the largest aquafeed company in the world and had interesting conversations about future challenges for the (freshwater) aquaculture sector in China.
Many thanks to the European Union and Monterey Bay Aquarium for funding this trip.
The image below links to a longer article about the visit published in China.
Click on the image to view the original article about the visit published in China