Coastal Shrimp Aquaculture in Thailand: Key Issues for Research

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !Figure 2 shows the levels of constraints to issues of sustainable shrimp farming inthe participant’s own country and the Asia–Pacific region. The similarity between thelevels in the participant’s own country and Asia–Pacific suggests there is good scopefor cooperation in research within the region. Common problems could be addressedby developing intra-regional research projects and linkages with related projects.Table 3.Factors which were considered to be the most important constraints to sustainabilityof the shrimp industry in the Asia–Pacific region. Points were allocated to eachresearch area according to its importance in improving the sustainablity of shrimpfarming. Each participant allocated a total of 100 points. Results show mean &standard deviation (minimum–maximum).ConstraintPoints allocationViral disease 13.4 & 5.4 (2–25)Bacterial disease 8.6 & 4.9 (0–20)Self-pollution 10.6 & 7.0 (0–30)Impact of civilisation 2.8 & 3.4 (0–10)Hatchery problems 7.4 & 6.2 (0–30)Broodstock problems 7.3 & 4.9 (0–20)Lack of training 5.0 & 5.3 (0–20)Trade restrictions 2.9 & 3.7 (0–10)Government regulations 5.9 & 3.7 (0–10)Poor pond management 11.3 & 6.1 (0–20)Feed problems 4.7 & 5.0 (0–20)Degrading of ponds with time 8.3 & 5.3 (0–20)Conflicts over land use 4.4 & 4.1 (0–15)Poor infrastructure 4.4 & 3.9 (0–14)Market competition 1.4 & 2.4 (0–9)Lack of appropriate research 6.8 & 7.5 (0–30)Results of Workshop Discussions and the Post-Workshop SurveyEight major areas of research were identified at the Workshop and each area was subdividedinto a total of 122 researchable issues (see Appendices 1 to 8). These issueswere concisely written by sub-groups and consensus views were obtained during discussionsessions that were held during and after the Workshop. In particular, eachissue was categorised according to five factors: the impact on productivity; achievability;importance; ongoing research efforts; and application of the research to targetgroups. In the Post-Workshop Survey, participants were asked to score each issue ona scale of 1 to 10 (lowest to highest, respectively) to indicate the priority of theresearch with respect to developing a sustainable shrimp industry. Each score couldbe used a maximum of 15 times.For each of the 122 issues, summary statistics were calculated for the scoring.The mean, standard deviation and median are listed in the tables in the Appendices.Figure 3 shows that there were 11 issues that received a median score of 8 out of 1096