Natural Food Better for Tilapia, Fishery Execs Say

Tilapia culture depends much upon the type of feed one uses. All artificial feeds do not have same quality and food conversion ration. Nevertheless it is ethical to utilize natural food. However natural food should only be used probably as supplement in extensive and intensive aquaculture. Taste has much to do with the type of ingredient used in compounding the artificial diet. It could be too wide a statement to make that artificial diets have lesser tasting tilapia. This is because several ingredients are utilized in feed optimization. Therefore the type, mode of preparation, species of tilapia, preservation of feed and physico chemical nature of aquatic ecosystem and aquaculture management practice, are all determinants of fish taste.

However it is good to incorporate natural food and involve the natural feeding regime. But care must be taken in drawing inferences from scare or few scenario surveys. This is because a wider spread of survey could give clearer and even at times more succinct results. With such taken into account, we would certainly have surer results every other factor notwithstanding. However it is good to opine use of natural food or better still incorporation of natural food.