Research Findings Can Significantly Reduce Production Costs
Caviar, made from cured sturgeon eggs, has remained an expensive delicacy predominantly due to the immoderate length of time needed to determine genders of the fish. However, a recently discovered technique developed by researchers at Kindai University has the potential to accelerate inexpensive caviar production.
Sturgeon farms accumulate large expenses, approximately 25% of overall production costs, waiting until their fish are around 3 years-old before cutting into their stomachs and identifying their reproductive glands. The fish are then stitched back up and returned to their tanks.
The findings at Kindai University would get rid of male sturgeons in a batch at the beginning of the process, eliminating the need to determine the gender of farmed sturgeon.
In December 2019, the researchers announced they had successfully turned a batch of artificially incubated sturgeon into females by administering hormones. The female sex hormone Estradiol was combined with regular feed administered to 150 juvenile Siberian sturgeons over the course of 6-months, starting 4-months after their initial incubation. The sturgeon was slowly switched back to regular feed after the 6-month period, and upon inspection of several fish, all of them contained egg cells.
Kindai University’s research is likely to benefit other Japanese caviar firms. Prefectural officials in Miyazaki, southern Japan, have been attempting to develop a new market for locally farmed sturgeon over the past several years as the species has grown in prominence across the prefecture.
Caviar Produced for Further Research in Japan
Read more about the research conducted by Kindai University at AquacultureAlliance.org:
“‘In Japan, sturgeon meat is almost never sold and the males, which cannot be used to produce caviar, only increase production costs at sturgeon farms,’ associate professor Toshinao Ineno of Kindai University’s Aquaculture Research Institute told the Advocate. ‘If we can get rid of the males from the beginning and we know for sure that all our fish are female, the cost of determining the sex of the fish can be brought down significantly.’
‘The results are extremely promising,’ said Ineno. ‘As well as producing caviar, an all-female batch of sturgeon is advantageous for other reasons. Sturgeons are big fish to rear, which means that we need more water and bigger rearing facilities. This is a significant hurdle to overcome in mass production and another reason why we started looking into all-female batches.’
‘We want to produce caviar to showcase Kindai’s technology and expertise, not profit from sales,’ said Ineno. ‘In order to export caviar abroad, fish farms and caviar factories must be registered under CITES rules but Kindai isn’t yet registered so our goal is to produce caviar for research and sell it within Japan.’”
Source: Champagne Wishes: Breakthrough in Japan May Make Caviar Cheaper - Global Aquaculture Alliance
Photo Source: WIX - www.wix.com
Written by AQUAMERGE
August 10, 2020