AQD conducts rural aquaculture training under the HRD program

AQD is the first among the SEAFDEC departments to conduct the Training of trainers, a series of 10-day courses that is being funded by the Japan-ASEAN Solidarity Fund of the ASEAN Foundation. The training series is under the project Human resource development (HRD) on poverty alleviation and food security by fisheries intervention in the ASEAN region that is implemented by SEAFDEC as a center-wide project.

As Chief Dr. JD Toledo explained, AQD is responsible for the HRD thematic area on rural aquaculture while other SEAFDEC departments will train trainers on local/indigenous institution & co-management and responsible fishing technology (TD), backyard fishery post-harvest technology (MFRD), and inland fisheries development (MFRDMD).

Further, the Chief noted that AQD is offering all of its packaged technologies which are products of 35 years of research work. These technologies, along with AQD’s extension strategies, were presented by 20 AQD senior staff.

Eight participants from SEAFDEC member-countries started the AQD course on 10 November and finished on the 19th. They were joined by an invited participant from AQD’s ICDSA-Northern Samar project and three students from Maejo University (Chiangmai, Thailand) who are undergoing their OJT at Tigbauan Main Station.

After the course, the next task of the eight participants, now fully considered trainers, is on-site training on their choice of technology for the fIsherfolk community they have chosen in their home countries.

Class chair Ms. Hasnisa bt. Hj Abdul Hamid of Malaysia was all praises (“More than I expected!”) for the resource persons and the training staff, though not for the schedule which most of her classmates consider as “tight”. The participants worked through the weekend, conducting participatory rural appraisal of a land-locked but water-rich Dumarao and the coastal Igang community.

The technology selected by the trainers of Thailand, Vietnam, Lao PDR and Indonesia to be “echoed” is freshwater aquaculture. Myanmar chose to focus on mudcrab; and Malaysia on shrimp (Penaeus monodon) and ornamental fish.

The Philippines and Cambodia are preferring combinations of freshwater and marine fish cage farming.