By M. Gulam Hussain
Overall editing and formatting by Alaina Dismukes and Laura Zseleczky
The final workshop of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish funded activity titled “Cryogenic Sperm Banking of Indian Major Carps and Exotic Carps for Commercial Seed Production and Brood Banking” was held on July 5, 2023, at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The workshop was organized jointly by the Department of Fisheries Biology and Genetics, Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU), the Aquatic Germplasm and Genetic Resources Center (AGGRC) at Louisiana State University (LSU), and the USAID-funded Fish Innovation Lab. Md. Abdul Awal, vice-chancellor of BAU, was the chief guest of the venue. Kh. Mahbubul Haque, director general for DoF; Yahia Mahmud, director general for the BFRI; and M. Gulam Hussain, Fish Innovation Lab Asia regional coordinator, were all special guests, and the workshop was chaired by Md. Abul Mansur, dean for the Faculty of Fisheries, BAU. An open discussion was facilitated by Md. Fazlul Awal Mollah, consultant of the activity.
Over 50 invited national and international participants and stakeholders were present at the workshop and represented a number of institutions, organizations, and universities such as DoF, BAU, BFRI, LSU, WorldFish, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Dhaka University, Banghandu Sheikh Mujibur Rahaman Agricultural University, and Noakhali Science and Technology University. Additionally, 12 fish hatchery owners, nursery owners, and farmers from Mymensingh, Jashore, Faridpur, and Rajshahi regions of Bangladesh attended.
Rafiqul Islam Sarder, lead principal investigator of the activity, made a detailed presentation of the activity's accomplishments. He explained the results, major achievements, and overall outcomes from the work over the last three years, including the impacts of cryogenic sperm banking technology for quality broodstock development and mass seed production of carp species. He specifically pointed out that the experimental species (i.e., catla, rohu, mrigal, silver carp, bighead carp, and grass carp) were collected from the Halda and Padma rivers and exotic species from DoF. In all the DoF and private on-farm sites in the Mymensingh, Jashore, Faridpur, and Rajshahi regions, the fish produced by cryopreserved sperm have shown superior growth and survival performance compared to the fish produced by non-cryopreserved sperm.
Sarder noted that cryogenic sperm banking technology is becoming more popular among private carp hatchery owners and fish farmers, so it could be packaged and transferred soon to DoF for wide-scale dissemination throughout Bangladesh. Jack Koch, senior researcher of the Aquatic Germplasm and Genetic Resources Center (AGGRC) at Louisiana State University, also presented his group’s recent genomic research outcomes and their implication on aquatic fish and animal genetic resources in the U.S. and worldwide.
During his address, Chief Guest Awal expressed his gratitude to the Fish Innovation Lab for their funding and all other support to this activity as well as two other ongoing activities at BAU. He thanked Sarder and the research team for conducting and developing such a promising technology, which will play a vital role in promoting fish farming in Bangladesh. Both the director generals of DoF and BFRI also expressed their satisfaction with the achievement of developing carp cryogenic sperm banking technology and hopes for further collaboration in the future with the Fish Innovation Lab and BAU. In the open discussion, several stakeholders and farmers spoke about the importance of the research and expressed their hope for wide-scale piloting and dissemination of the cryogenic sperm banking technology in Bangladesh.
Published July 7, 2023
