Progress report for FW24-022
Project Information
There is a global groundswell of interest in small and commercial-scale systems that integrate recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) technology and hydroponic plant production (“aquaponics”).
At more than 15 Billion pounds of global production annually, tilapia is second only to carp species in global aquaculture production. Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) is the most widely cultivated species of tilapia, due to its favorable growth rates, fillet yield, and large terminal size. However, all tilapias are cold-intolerant. Conversely, the vast proportion of aquaponic production, at both small and large scale, is focused on leafy green vegetables and herbs which are predominantly cool-loving and often heat-intolerant. Yet, tilapias are the most widely utilized fish in aquaponics, both in the US and abroad. The mismatched temperature optima between tilapia and most leafy green vegetables frequently require producers to grow tilapia at suboptimal temperatures in deference to their vegetable counterparts, resulting in poor performance, vulnerability to disease, and the relegation of fish to the role of a fertilizer source rather than a commercial product.
AmeriCulture’s strain of Nile tilapia is uniquely qualified as a base strain for further development given its origins from the relatively cooler waters of Lake Nasser, Egypt. As the largest hatchery in the US marketed high-performance, disease-free juvenile fish to other producers who raise the fish for resale, AmeriCulture is uniquely positioned to disseminate improved tilapia fingerlings in mass to North American aquaponic producers.
SARE funds will facilitate AmeriCulture’s production of its ninth generation of fish as a baseline strain for future development of Nile tilapia more compatible with hydroponics than existing strains, directly benefiting aquaponic producers in the US and abroad. AmeriCulture’s established production facilities, existing genetic resources and both in-house and advisory expertise bolster the likelihood of success in further developing and disseminating aquaponic-compatible Nile Tilapia.
There is a global groundswell of interest in small and commercial-scale systems that integrate recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) technology and hydroponic plant production (“aquaponics”).
At more than 15 Billion pounds of global production annually, tilapia is second only to carp species in global aquaculture production. Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) is the most widely cultivated species of tilapia, due to its favorable growth rates, fillet yield, and large terminal size. However, all tilapias are cold-intolerant. Conversely, the vast proportion of aquaponic production, at both small and large scale, is focused on leafy green vegetables and herbs which are predominantly cool-loving and often heat-intolerant. Yet, tilapias are the most widely utilized fish in aquaponics, both in the US and abroad. The mismatched temperature optima between tilapia and most leafy green vegetables frequently require producers to grow tilapia at suboptimal temperatures in deference to their vegetable counterparts, resulting in poor performance, vulnerability to disease, and the relegation of fish to the role of a fertilizer source rather than a commercial product.
AmeriCulture’s strain of Nile tilapia is uniquely qualified as a base strain for further development given its origins from the relatively cooler waters of Lake Nasser, Egypt. As the largest hatchery in the US marketed high-performance, disease-free juvenile fish to other producers who raise the fish for resale, AmeriCulture is uniquely positioned to disseminate improved tilapia fingerlings in mass to North American aquaponic producers.
SARE funds will facilitate AmeriCulture’s production of its ninth generation of fish as a baseline strain for future development of Nile tilapia more compatible with hydroponics than existing strains, directly benefiting aquaponic producers in the US and abroad. AmeriCulture’s established production facilities, existing genetic resources and both in-house and advisory expertise bolster the likelihood of success in further developing and disseminating aquaponic-compatible Nile Tilapia.
Budget and Timeline RevisedAmeriCulture has the capability of pairing twelve genetic crosses at one time. From experience, approximately half- to two-thirds of crosses result in fry production within the three-week window provided breeders before a breeding round is terminated. We estimate that 6 months or more will be required to produce the generation 9 target of 42 families.
Approximately two years are required for the females of the last of the families to reach a selectable size, a size also suitable for egg production, and thus strain dissemination and validation. However, large commercial scale validation must wait until the offspring of generation 9 reach sexual maturity. Thus, we envision that the program will span a period of three years. The vast majority of project effort, and thus costs, will occur in the first two years of the project.
Outreach activities will begin to take place one year into the project, at which time small amounts of fingerlings become available for small-scale validation.
| Date | Activities | Team Members |
| April 2024-October 2024 | Producing generation 9 according to breeding matrix provided by Gary Chapman | Damon Seawright (PI) Gary Chapman (TA) Bill Wilcox (Hatchery Tech) |
| April 2024-April 2026 | Growout, assessment, selection, tagging, and aggregating of selected | Damon Seawright (PI) Gary Chapman (TA) Bill Wilcox (Hatchery Tech) |
| April 2025-April 2027 | Dissemination of juveniles to aquaponic customers and outreach activities | Damon Seawright (PI) Bill Wilcox (Hatchery Tech) |
Cooperators
- - Technical Advisor
Research
The project will take place at AmeriCulture’s geothermally-heated, indoor production facility in Animas, New Mexico. This established facility provides the requisite conditioning, breeding, and growout infrastructure needed for project success.
In order to establish a baseline population for the development of an aquaponic-compatible strain of Nile Tilapia, AmeriCulture will initiate, at the direction of Gary Chapman, the creation of up to 42 novel, distantly-related families from among the genetics constituting AmeriCulture generation 8. The novel generation, generation 9, will be selected for performance under temperature regimes approximating those of aquaponic systems. We originally anticipated that it will take approximately 6 months to produce all 42 families. However, due to winter wind damage sustained to the greenhouse structure where generation 9 production takes place, we estimate that it will take an additional 5 months to produce families #24 through #42. Twenty-three families were produced prior to the damage, since repaired. Furthermore, because females grow at less than half the rate of males, we anticipate that females from the last families will be ready for evaluation at approximately 18-24 months from the commencement of the project. At that time, fingerlings from selected families will be produced, grown to maturity, and eventually bred for large scale commercial validation among AmeriCulture’s many customers. In the interim, AmeriCulture will disseminate smaller batches of fingerlings to small aquaculture and aquaponic producers for performance evaluation. Due to biological limitations, the ultimate validation of our selection efforts over one generation will necessarily extend well-beyond the term of the SARE funding. Consequently, our chief objective is to utilize SARE funding to help facilitate the creation and initial development of the genetic base, ideally consisting of 42 distantly-related families that will form the foundation for future development. We anticipate that the development of the strain will continue indefinitely. This narrowed objective is realistic, lies well within our combined operational and technical capabilities, and can be achieved within the time limitations of the SARE program.
Gary Chapman will provide AmeriCulture an optimized breeding matrix that minimizes inbreeding and loss of genetic material from among AmeriCulture’s existing pedigreed families. AmeriCulture staff, supported in part with SARE funding, will identify representative family members, prepare breeding facilities, monitor breeding, collect resulting fry, and rear fry to young adulthood in preparation for selection, tagging, family aggregation for communal rearing, and growout to a final selection size. By the time of final selection, families will have been reduced to approximately 200 fish, split roughly evenly between the sexes. The fish exhibiting the greatest weight at a particular time horizon will constitute the selected subgroup, from which the single fish displaying the most favorable morphometric characteristics (e.g. small head, broad back, deep body, and high presumptive fillet yield) will represent that family for the subsequent generation 10.
The family based selection program to be utilized is identical to the program utilized by Gary Chapman at NATI, an approach utilized widely within the aquaculture industry. It is not that selection method that is innovative, but rather AmeriCulture’s unique existing genetic line that is slightly more cold-tolerant than most Nile Tilapia due to its origin in the cooler waters of Lake Nasser, Egypt. Natural selection has thus conveyed a beneficial starting point for our long-term objectives.
AmeriCulture is home to a number of near ideal recirculating aquaculture systems for use in this project. These systems are already complete, fully-functional, and operational, thus preserving SARE funding for direct operating costs including project labor, project oversight, advisory services, identification tags, and feed.
As PI, Damon Seawright will oversee the collection and recording of project data. He, with the assistance of the TA, will insure that all SARE project reporting requirements are timely met.
AmeriCulture has successfully produced 23 of the targeted 42 families of generation 9. The damage sustained to our primary production greenhouse, since repaired, interrupted the production of the final 19 families. Production of these families will resume late March and is tentatively estimated to be completed on about the end of August of 2025. The first generation 9 families will commence breeding for commercial production of fry in April of 2025. Selection, tagging, and on-growing of generation 9 family representatives from families #1 through #23 have occurred as anticipated.
Outreach activities, though beyond the January 28, 2025 scope of this interim progress report, will begin on March 17, 2025 at Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario, Canada.
Research Outcomes
As AmeriCulture has (a) produced just over half of the number of families targeted for generation 9, (b) not yet commenced commercial production of fry from generation 9 families, and (c) not had outreach activities, the research has not yet yielded recommendations for sustainable agriculture production and future research.
Education and Outreach
Participation Summary:
Gary Chapman is a prolific aquaculture and aquaponic consultant, particularly among indigenous people groups in Canada. Gary is currently assisting the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario, Burns Lake Band in British Columbia, and the Little Black Bear First Nation in Saskatchewan with commercial aquaponic systems growing tilapia. AmeriCulture has provided aquaponic consultancy to the Sumas First Nation of British Columbia. We are unaware of comparative aquaponic development among indigenous peoples within the US. However, we view the success of the outreach and training of Canadian indigenous peoples, resulting in commercially-viable aquaponic enterprises, as a model for the US.
The accelerated pace of adoption of aquaponic production in Canada by indigenous communities is a result of strong financial support from Canadian and provincial governments, pertinent consultant expertise (primarily Gary Chapman), reconciliation-driven federal policy, and the need for both food security and food sovereignty among the mostly northerly tribal groups.
Due to logistical limitations associated with the northerly locations of all but one of the aforementioned tribal groups, the aquaponic enterprises must breed and rear their own juvenile tilapia, rather than purchase juveniles from AmeriCulture. This requires considerable transfer of hatchery know-how. For example, members from the Curve Lake First Nation visited AmeriCulture’s New Mexico production facility to learn about hatchery production from egg collection to final grading. During the summer of 2025, when newly-constructed facilities are complete, AmeriCulture will transfer very young broodstock from its production facility to the Curve Lake First Nation for them to produce their own juveniles as soon as broodstock reach sexual maturity. In the meantime, Curve Lake will have to cultivate juveniles shipped to Ontario from AmeriCulture's New Mexico Facility. AmeriCulture and Gary Chapman have decided to transfer a portion of the juvenile representatives from families #24 through #42 directly to Curve Lake's production facility, as they are being produced.
Although AmeriCulture has since its inception provided free advice to its customer base, educational content specifically resulting from the outcome of the proposed project will be focused on the utilization of its fingerlings for aquaponic systems that have lower-than-optimal operating temperatures or for systems in which adequate temperature cannot be economically, or feasibly, maintained within optimal ranges. Damon Seawright actively supports, and is involved with, the only academic aquaculture program in New Mexico at Santa Fe community college. In March of 2025, Damon Seawright will be visiting Curve Lake First Nation in order to provide hatchery technology training in anticipation of the arrival of future breeders.
AmeriCulture limits visitors to its facilities for biosecurity reasons. Consequently, AmeriCulture primary outreach to domestic producers will necessarily be remote through its website and social media platforms via written media and video training.
AmeriCulture’s industry role is to provide high-performance, disease-free fingerlings to the North American tilapia industry. The purpose of the proposed project is to ultimately augment our offerings with tilapia that are progressively more compatible with aquaponic system temperatures. It is not our role to promote aquaponic production. Consequently, we cannot predict when or how opportunities within indigenous communities might arise to promote aquaponics and supply the resulting projects with appropriate fingerlings. However, AmeriCulture will actively engage with such indigenous communities when such opportunities arise, and will continue engaging with those that it, and Gary Chapman, are already engaged with.
With Gary Chapman’s efforts as a prototype, the outreach activities that have been conducive to development have been provincial workshops and community presentations, with information transfer aided by the use of digital presentations, informational handouts, technical papers, and videos. We anticipate similar strategies within the Western Region. Within indigenous communities, we would target management of casinos and other businesses, from which internal funding might arise, as well as students, teachers, and the general tribal populace.
Ideally, the results of this project will be a progressive and continuing genetic development initiative that will produce ever-improving tilapia fingerlings for use by our customers. Producers and the public will most likely become aware of our progress and outcome through our website and social media posts.
Given that all outreach and educational activities will occur after the January 28, 2025 progress reporting window, there are no education or outreach results to report.
Education and Outreach Outcomes
The singular outreach event prior to January 28, 2025, which involved two individuals affiliated with the farming entity and one governmental authority charged with fostering aquaculture development among Canadian indigenous communities, involved a visit to AmeriCulture's New Mexico production facility. The follow-on activities will take place mid-March of 2025 and will include comprehensive tilapia hatchery education and training.
Curve Lake First Nation has little experience with tilapia hatchery production. Thus, their visit to our facility resulted in both awareness of the physical and operational requirements required for commercial juvenile tilapia production, and formative knowledge of the procedures involved and protocols required for successful hatchery production.