Development of Shrimp Culture Techniques and Facilities in Taiwan

Abstract

The prawn/shrimp culture was practiced in Taiwan before 1969 using natural seeds and polycultured with milkfish. Since then, owing to the success in artificial seed production, the prawn shrimp culture enterprise expanded very quickly. At first, farm area and density increased, and then the culture system changed from polyculture to monoculture. The highest production of 100,000 T/year was achieved in 1987. Since 1988, however, the prawn/shrimp production in Taiwan dropped significantly due to several problems including disease outbreaks. In order to revive the performance of shrimp culture, series of research on viral disease and culture technology have been undertaken. For the culture technology, polyculture and closed recirculating system are the main points of research. After a decade of research and field testing, it showed that the indoor recirculating shrimp intensive culture can efficiently prevent diseases, and concurrently save water and land resources. However, the technology is not yet fully matured, dissemination is still inadequate, and cost for facilities and electricity are relatively high. As such, shrimp product price must be higher than US$13/kg for the system be cost-effective. Other alternative is to improve the outdoor shrimp culture system and/or facilities for effective cleansing/treatment of sludge and improving culture environment. Looking at Taiwan shrimp consumer market demand, it is worthwhile to invest more manpower and financial support to improve the shrimp culture systems, so as to reduce the production cost and provide cheaper and better quality shrimp products.