2012/733 Driving commercialisation - R & D Workshop, Australian Prawn and Barramundi Farmers Conference, Cairns 2012

By Anni Conn

The Australian Seafood CRC and the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) sponsored a two hour mini R & D Forum in association with the Australian Prawn Farmers Association (APFA) and the Australian Barramundi Farmers Association (ABFA) conference. The forum was an open event that represented an opportunity for Australian prawn and Barramundi farmers to identify and present current R & D priority issues to key industry research providers and technology suppliers in order to explore commercially viable approaches to tackling these issues from a farm‐up perspective. They intend to use this information as a platform to:

• Prioritise the limiting issues determined for each of the three R & D areas.
• Drill down into the priority issues to identify why these limitations exist –what are the root causes to these limiting issues?
• Identify any existing solutions & current R & D.
•  Identify key linkages between industry and stakeholders and possible R & D pathways.
• Document the discussion and key findings and disseminate this information to the APFA and ABFA for the associations to drive the process of developing the R & D pathways identified.

The forum generated a significant amount of information on the current key limitations faced by prawn and Barramundi farmers with regard to making improvements in the areas of product price, stock growth and stock survival.