| PANGGA FISH A HIT AT AGRILINK
This year's Agrilink saw the first exposure of a new fish called "Pangga". The fish is also called "tra" in Vietnam. This fish is Pangasius hypopthalmus , a big dollar earner for Vietnam together with a related species, Pangasius bocourti which the Vietnamese call basa. Both are sometimes referred to as Mekong catfish because indeed it is a type of catfish that is native to the Mekong river area. The tra is popular for pond culture while most of the cages in Mekong River are stocked with basa. This year Vietnam is estimated to produce 600,000 metric tons in the Mekong Delta area alone. By 2010 a production of one million metric tons is projected.
What makes this fish very important to Vietnam is that it is now exported to 65 countries including the Philippines with a primary market in Europe and America. It is so marketable because once filleted it is considered a "generic white fish" that can be used in many food preparations to substitute for marine fish even in high end hotels and restaurants.
Can the Philippines still penetrate the global market with Vietnam already entrenched? Both Santeh Feeds and Dr. Gregorio N. Domingo Jr. of Davao think so and has tied up to develop the local Pangasius industry.
Santeh Feeds is a leading aquaculture feed manufacturer based in Calumpit, Bulacan. The company produces quality feeds for shrimps, bangus, tilapia, grouper, seabass, pompano and hito since 1990. It saw the potentials of Pangasius when company officials visited Vietnam five years ago. At that time Santeh Feeds immediately imported some basa fingerlings into the country and managed to grow them to marketable size in a freshwater pond in Bustos, Bulacan. The trial run was successful and gave the company experience in formulating the feed required. Based on that run Santeh Feeds developed a feed line for Pangasius with seven feed types to suit various stages of culture from crumbles for early fingerlings to 12 mm pellet for sizes bigger than one kilogram. The feed could not be promoted because of shortage of fingerlings locally. The species is not found naturally in the Philippines. Vietnam has banned the export of live fingerlings.
The real break came when Santeh Feed officials learned the existence of, and visited a Pangasius farm in Tugbok District, Davao City. The farm in Tugbok is owned and operated by Dr. Domingo or Greg as he prefers to be called, a veterinarian in profession but an aquaculturist in practice. The farm has been operating for the past twenty years. Initially it was stocked with African catfish. But in May 2002, Greg received a gift of 2,000 pcs of tra fingerlings from the Indonesian Consul Karsono Parto Susanto in Davao City in appreciation for his effort to share his technology for the culture of African catfish to Indonesians that was arranged by the good consul.
At first Greg did not quite know what to do with the fingerlings. He just stocked them in one pond and fed them with catfish pellets which he used for his African catfish. Before he knew it the fish had grown to large sizes of up to two kilograms. At present the oldest fish he has in stock is already five years old measuring one meter in length and weighing 9 kilograms. In fact the Pangasius is known in Vietnam to be capable of growing from 150 grams to 650 grams in only 74 days in ponds or from 100 g to two kg after one year in cages set in the river. What is more remarkable is that they can be stocked at 300,000 per hectare without any aerator. They can survive at very low dissolved oxygen because they can also breathe directly from the air through their breathing organ which is cross between gills and lungs.
Dr. Domingo was able to market the fish in Davao City. More importantly he has been successful in raising some of the initial stock to sexual maturity and in propagating them. Right now he is capable of producing fingerlings by the hundreds of thousand. The fish grows to one kg in 6 months from 20 gram fingerlings with a Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR) of 1.5. Since the survival rate is almost 100%, the cost to produce one kg amounts to less than 40 pesos per kg. Local companies cannot wait for local production to grow to a sufficient level for them to process the fish both for local and export market.
The Pangasius catfish indeed promises to invigorate the local freshwater aquaculture industry.
Interested parties who would like to grow Pangasius may contact Dr. Domingo at 0915-8135757 or Santeh Feeds Corporation at (02) 374-8031.
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