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Monday, October 24, 2005
An awesome trip to the tilapia farm
By Lory Ann B. Bilbao
IT TAKES a thirty-minute ride to reach Bulong, Sta. Barbara where awesome-sized tilapia, cultured in four thousand-meter-wide ponds are seen and if you have permission, eaten.
Upon reaching the area, it made me realize that indeed, Pinoys have so much to be proud of. One is our very rich seafood resource--something that Japanese, who love to eat raw fish meat can be jealous of.
This tilapia farm is called the Technological Outreach Station (Tos), pilot area of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (Bfar).
Farmers' Livelihood
Edna Janeo, chief of the Tos, said that the station primarily aims to augment the lives of their fellowmen through providing them with something they could earn from at no monetary expense at all. They provide free fingerlings to farmers who have potential grower ponds in their area.
Tos gives 500 free fingerlings to individual farmers who have potential ponds and as many as tens of thousands to provinces and localities that make a request, provided that the Department of Agriculture in their town or province prove that they have potential fish farming areas.
Janeo added that it targets a production of 10 million Excel tilapia fingerlings a year for distribution to farmers region wide and to produce and dispense Excel tilapia F1 broodstock, the finest breed.
The Tos chief explained that every hatching month, the area produces close to 10,000 fingerlings approximately 100 fingerlings are being produced by each tilapia.
The farm started with only 100 varieties of hybrid tilapia which came from the Munoz, Nueva Ecija breeder.
Nicolitus tilapia, the hybrid variety weighs as heavy as one kilo each. It of course takes as long as one year to produce tilapia that fine and big plus a lot of handwork and heart nurturing such mammals.
Janeo told the media that the station already has provided hundreds of thousands of fingerlings since its launch in 1994 to provinces in the region.
Breeding
The 4,000-meter wide farm has a total of 12 ponds--six catered for the fingerlings, the other six for the breeder.
Two out of the six ponds for the breeder are catered for fully grown tilapia--one for the Excel 1 tilapia and the other for the Excel 2.
Excel one is the breed of two different varieties and the other excel is the breed of another two different varieties.
The purpose of breeding it with another variety is to get combined attributes of each breed and finally produce the finest breed.
The produced Excel 1 breed is again breed with excel 2, and so on and so forth until the farm produces the F1 broodstock.
For areas, which would find it hard to reach the station, Tos has four hatchery stations--Iloilo State College of Fisheries (Iscof) in Barotac Nuevo, Aklan State University in Banga, Aklan, Bibal Farm in Magubila Capiz and Municipal Hatchery of Sagay Negros.
The area, though it targets around 10 million of fingerlings per year, is limited, so Janeo said that the farm would probably transfer to Salihid, Barotac Nuevo as soon as necessary documents are secured.
(October 24, 2005 issue)
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