June 15, 2010

The Agricultural Research Centre (ARC) of the University of Ghana (UG) has developed an Aquaculture Project to culture tilapia in commercial quantities to serve as a source of funding for its ARC activities.

The project, also known as Cage Fishing, involves sinking cages into a river and stocking them with up to 5,000 fingerlings and providing them with feeds to develop into mature tilapia within six months. The ARC is undertaking the project on the portion of the Volta Lake near its ARC boundaries at Kpong in the Greater Accra Region.

Professor Kwame Afreh-Nuamah, director of Institute of Agriculture Research of the UG, said the development of the project, apart from serving as a source of funding for the ARC, was also meant to provide researchers with first hand information on challenges facing fish farmers in the area and how best to help them to overcome such challenges.

Eight cages all stocked with 5,000 fingerlings each, had already been sunk into the lake, he said. "This means, if things work well, by the next six months the ARC should be harvesting 40,000 tilapia," he added.

According to the facility, the minimum weight of each tilapia would be 350 grams, and the immediate customers for the fish would be the University community before extending it to other markets.