Cacana - OVO

The rapid population growth in Uganda causes an increased food demand. Aquaculture is one of the main industries providing food in Uganda and is a steadily growing sector. However the growth of aquaculture and its durability cannot keep up with the growing population due to several difficulties. Cacana is a company in Uganda hatching catfish eggs and breeding young fish to supply the local fish farmers. They as well are facing the difficulties of African aquaculture. One of the technical difficulties are the low survival rates of larvae and young fish after they have hatched.

The addition of probiotics, extracted from the guts from African catfish, to their feed has shown to be a promising way to increase their survival rate. Probiotics are bacteria living in synergy with some target species, in this case African catfish, improving their vitality and growth rate.

Although the use of probiotics has already proved to be useful, at the moment African companies mostly depend on foreign production and lack the techniques to develop probiotics themselves. The goal of the project is to isolate a probiotic for catfish farming and set up a commercial production suited for African catfish. These can be used in fish-food thereby increasing the food security and productivity locally and by extension in the whole country. By working together with the local university the knowledge of culturing probiotics is transferred. This will increase the potential of local researchers in improving the probiotics effectiveness