September 14, 2006

US university harvest first indoor-grown shrimp

University of Southern Mississippi (USM) researchers have harvested its first batch of shrimp raised in an indoor growing facility.

The university's research lab harvested about 1,000 pounds of shrimp at their 18,800-square-foot facility after culturing the shrimps for 18 weeks.

The tanks are the largest growing centre of its kind in the country, USM officials said.

The project aims to get private companies to grow shrimp the same way.

Not only do the team's achievements reflect what can be done with current technology, it also showed that shrimp farming is feasible in the US, Bill Hawkins, executive director of the Gulf Coast Research Lab said.

Jeff Lotz, director of the marine aquaculture programme, said the shrimp would be sold locally under a brandname from the university.

Currently, only about 20 percent of the shrimps consumed in the US is sourced locally. The rest comes from the US$4 billion the country spends on shrimp imports each year.

The research shows that more shrimp could be grown in the US, Lotz said. Shrimps produced this way causes low environmental impact, with one pound of shrimps produced for every 20 gallons of water, one of the smallest amounts needed in the world, according to Lotz.