Aquaculture is an increasingly important sector in global food production. However, its growth is threatened by the high cost of feed, which accounts for up to 70% of the production costs. F eed conversion ratio (FCR) is a key indicator of the efficiency of aquaculture production and refers to the amount of feed required to produce a unit of fish biomass. Improving FCR is crucial to increasing profitability, sustainability, and environmental performance. Artificial intelligence (AI) and production data can be leveraged to optimize feed management, while biomass estimation cameras can improve feeding accuracy and reduce wastage.
AI can be used to analyze production data and identify patterns that can inform feed management decisions. Feeding is a complex activity in that feed ingestion by fish depends on many factors, environmental, genetic, husbandry, nutritional, behavioral, etc. By analyzing these variables, AI systems can optimize feeding regimes to improve FCR and fish growth. Advanced farm management software will help feed these AI models and deliver continuous improvement of feeding and growth models specific for each farm.
But a feeding regime can only work when farmers have a good notion of the biomass in each pen. Biomass estimation cameras can improve the accuracy of feeding by estimating fish size and quantity in real time. This data is then used to adjust feed delivery rates and reduce overfeeding, which can lead to poor water quality, disease, and mortality. Innovasea has developed its BiomassPro solution to reliably estimate fish weight distribution in several farmed species, with more than 97% accuracy for most species and up to 99% accuracy in others. In addition to enabling more precise feeding, these cameras also help farmers forecast production yields, optimize harvest schedules, and reduce fish waste.