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Innovations and startups making waves
Among the leading shrimp farming countries, it is none other than Indonesia where the conversation is on the adoption of Technology 4.0, which is considered an indispensable tool by industry players. Despite the slowdown with the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr Romi Novriadi, Vice President of the Indonesian Aquaculture Society or MAI, said that it is either staying with the traditional systems or adopt IR4.0 i.e. stay or move into the future. This is the country’s strategy to increase production volumes using the existing aquaculture areas. Indonesia has some early startups in aquaculture, such as eFishery, which is making waves in the aquaculture sector.(see page 62). At the July International Forum of Science and Technology (FOSTECH) MAI webinar series on Smart Aquaculture for Farmers, Agus Somamihardja, Head, Indonesia Shrimp Hatchery Association pushed for scientific shrimp farming and data recording to monitor the pond’s water parameters. “Aquaculture is a complex activity, and farmers should view the pond in three dimensions instead of just one,” said Agus. “There is a need to have precision and increased accuracy; so that aquaculture can be a predictable activity. This can be achieved by adopting automation and removing the subjective elements in shrimp farming,” added Agus. A poll launched at the webinar showed that data recording was done manually on paper (38%), Excel spreadsheet (57%) or using a management system (4%). BOSCH has entered the Indonesian market with AquaEasy, and Aries Dwiputera, Product Manager said that the goal is to transform shrimp farming from an art to a science. AquaEasy is a comprehensive artificial intelligence (AI) innovation to optimise shrimp culture. The development process began 3 years ago and today it encompasses disease and water quality management, and fills the gaps in the estimation of several parameters. It starts with sensors to get accurate, fast and reliable measurements of multiple water quality parameters for data analysis, and modelling to give insights into biomass estimation and growth anomalies. With cloud connectivity, production information is available in real-time and across all devices. The farmers get to know the crop status, whether it is optimal or below average. The system works on a subscription basis. Sensors can be located permanently in ponds or moved depending on the subscription level. The World Bank has a series of webinars on the Internet of Things (IoT) for Agriculture . This initiative is supported by the Korea-World Bank Partnership Facility (KWPF), and in collaboration with USAID and Feed the Future, which is the US Government's global hunger and food security initiative. India’s Sreeram Raavi, Founder and Managing Director of Eruvaka Technologies was selected to present on “Transforming Aquaculture with IoT”. Eruvaka is already established in India, Central America and Ecuador, and has plans to expand into Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam with water quality monitoring, automated aerator control and on-demand intelligient feeding with acoustics integrated into a cloud-based
September/October 2020 AQUA Culture Asia Pacific
software to provide insights on pond performance. Seeram explained the value chain integration– how Eruvaka’s data analysis of shrimp growth assesses post larvae batch performance and how this information can be filtered back to the hatchery to reflect on performance of broodstock. In the pond, real time feed consumption data show the health status of the stock and downstream, real time availability of shrimp biomass can be sent to prepare processing plants. The cost element to use these innovations is always a concern among farmers but Seeram pointed out that costs of his subscription-based business model is compensated by the savings in feeds (20%) and energy (~15%). Similar to several startups in shrimp farming, Eruvaka’s seamless integration of data contributes to risk mitigation for insurance purposes. Next, Seeram plans to develop intelligent feed trays to assess shrimp growth and health, underwater drones to assess shrimp activity, and image processing-based feeders to access feed consumption by different fish species such as the tilapia. The latter is targeted for farms in Bangladesh, Vietnam and Indonesia. At the August webinar on “Mariculture: The future of Asian Aquaculture”, organised by Infofish and sponsored by Skretting, USSEC’s Lan Hsiang-Pin expects that in the future, offshore aquaculture will be the mainstream culture system. Today, feeding is still manually done and new technologies such as image recognition and acoustic driven feeding will dramatically reduce feed conversion ratios. Joyce Leo, Marine Scientist at the Singapore-Japan deep tech startup UMITRON explained that the technology developed is aimed at increasing productivity in marine fish farming. There is the large smart automated feeder with feed management software and a feed silo of 400kg and another, without a feed silo for those farms already equipped with feed barges but is lacking in a centralised feed management software. How to accurately determine biomass in a cage remains a challenge and this is being resolved with underwater cameras measuring fish length. Next will be correlation of length and weight to have a more precise biomass data.
Eruvaka's on-demand feeding of the shrimp based on acoustics, water quality, and growth models. The farmer only needs to fill up the hopper.
