Prof. Richard Akromah (left), the Provost of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, delivering the vice-chancellor’s address

Conference on animal nutrition underway in Kumasi

Daniel K. Kenu Aug - 09 - 2016 , 16:00

Aquaculture experts across the globe are helping to develop suitable supplementary diets using locally available plant by-products for fish farmers in Ghana to meet the 2018 production target.

Participants in a two-day international conference on animal nutrition dominated by agricultural researchers and professors in the sub-region is agreeing on less expensive, yet highly nutritious dietary supplements to increase yield and reduce money spent on the importation of foreign supplements.

Various surveys have suggested that Ghana has sufficient agro by-products, particularly oil-seed cake resources, to satisfy current and future demands from aquaculture.

A national policy on aquaculture was adopted in July 2013 with the objective of increasing aquaculture production from 40,000 tonnes to 130,000 tonnes by 2018.

In a speech read for him by the Provost of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Professor Richard Akromah, the Vice Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Professor Kwasi Obiri-Danso, said Ghana’s average pond production ranged from 2.5 to 3.0 tonnes, which is equal to or less than the reported harvest outputs of three tonnes (FAO, 2005) for tilapia grown in fertilised ponds without any external feed input.

He said Ghana’s production was very low compared to Egypt, which is Africa’s largest tilapia producer, stressing the importance of a high-yielding locally produced dietary supplement to increase yield.

The conference was on the theme: ‘Agro-products in animal feed production in West Africa’ and had the aim of producing cost-effective and environmentally friendly fish feed using agro by-products.

The Director, Directorate of Academic Planning of the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria, Professor Oyedapo A. Fagbenro, said the conference was crucial to the development of information and data on agro by-products for dissemination across the sub-region for a holistic approach to identify options for optimising animal protein production.