Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development COLLABORATION FOR AGRICULTURE & RURAL DEVELOPMENT (CARD) Development of clam culture for improvement and diversification of livelihoods of the poor coastal communities in Central Vietnam (027/05VIE) Project Completion Report Milestone 14 May 2010 Table of Contents Institute Information Project Abstract Executive summary Introduction & Background 4.1 Objectives and Outputs of Project 4.2 Implementation Approach and Strategy 4.3 Implementation Methodologies 10 Progress to Date 11 5.1 Implementation highlights 11 5.1.1 Development of hatchery operation procedure and establishment of infrastructure 11 5.1.2 Establishment of new hatcheries and transfer of technology 13 5.1.3 Clam production technology development 13 5.1.4 Demonstrations 14 5.2 Smallholder benefits 17 5.2.1 Opportunity to utilize the brackish water ponds for clam production 17 5.2.2 Increasing in production and benefit from clam culture in the intertidal areas 17 5.2.3 Easily Applicable Farming Knowledge 17 5.2.4 Low Investment Risk 17 5.2.5 Maximizing Commercial Potential through Knowledge 17 5.3 Capacity Building 19 5.3.1 ARSINC and provincial staff 19 5.3.2 End-users 19 5.4 Publicity 19 Fig.8 Project completion workshop December 2009 at Thanh Hoa 20 5.5 Project Management 20 Report on cross-cutting Issues 21 Environment 21 Gender and Social Issue 21 Implications on other project 21 Implementation and Sustainability Issues 22 Issues and Constraints 22 7.1 Options 22 7.2 Sustainability 22 Next critical steps 22 Conclusion 23 10 Statutory Declaration 23 SARDI 23 ARSINC 24 10 APPENDIX A - Project Progress against Proposed Objectives, Outputs, Activities and Inputs 27 11 Appendix B: Case study cum Demonstration 31 Design and data collection of demonstrations 31 Results 33 Clam monoculture in canal 33 2.1.1 Environmental parameters 33 2.1.2 Growth and survival parameters 34 2.1.3 Environmental parameters 37 2.1.4 Growth and survival rates 38 2.1.5 Clam and prawn production 40 Growth comparison of culturing M lyrata in polyculture (pond) and monoculture culture (canal) 40 2.1.6 Environmental parameters 40 2.1.7 Growth and survival rates 41 Conclusion 44 Appendix C: Brief if training and workshop 45 Appendix D: List of students’ thesis under supervision of ARCINC/SARDI 51 Institute Information Project Name Development of clam culture for improvement and diversification of livelihoods of the poor coastal communities in Central Vietnam (Project No: 027/05VIE) Vietnamese Institution Aquaculture Research Sub-Institution for North Central (ARSINC) Vietnamese Project Team Leader Mr Chu Chi Thiet (Project Director) Australian Organisation South Australian Research and Development Institution (SARDI) Australian Personnel Dr Martin S Kumar (Project Leader) Date commenced February 2006 Completion date (original) 2009 Completion date (revised) February 2010 Reporting period February 2006 - December 2009 Contact Officer(s) In Australia: Team Leader Name: Dr Martin Kumar Telephone: 08 82075400 Position: Principal Scientist, and Program Leader, Fax: 08 82075481 Email: kumar.martin@saugov sa.gov.au Integrated Biosystems Integrated Resource Management and Biotechnology Organisation South Australian Research and Development Institution (SARDI) In Australia: Administrative contact Name: Lindy Macalister Telephone: +81 8303 7783 Position: Divisional Finance Officer Fax: +81 8303 7975 Email: Macalister.Lindy@saugov.sa.gov.au Organisation South Australian Research and Development Institute In Vietnam Name: Chu Chi Thiet Telephone: +84.383829884 Position: Director Fax: +84.383829378 Email: arsinc_ria1@vnn.vn Organisation Aquaculture Research SubInstitute for North-Central Project Abstract The aim of the project is to provide alternative income and food security by developing and extending the clam culture technology (hatchery and husbandry) to sustain livelihoods of poor coastal farmers in the North Central provinces This project played a key role in establishing a sustainable clam industry in the coastal area of North central Vietnam The extension of the clam culture techniques has made significant impact to poor coastal communities, by providing alternative livelihoods through clam culture in ponds and also increased productivity and income in tidal clam culture This project also extended much needed technology and infrastructure for artificial seed production by establishing clam hatcheries Overall, project achieved the key objectives in the development of clam production technology and hatchery operational procedures for mass clam seed production The key outcomes in terms of technological development are: • For the first time in Vietnam, clam (M lyrata) was successfully cultured in ponds On farm trials successful • Mass production techniques of clam spats developed • Clams were successfully reared in canals utilising nutrients from farm effluent • Clam and prawn polyculture techniques developed • Improved production in intertidal clam culture Capacity building was one of the key objectives met at different level (1) Technical training workshops for provincial technicians and small scale farmers about clam culture were conducted Technical training for young Vietnamese researchers in the use and application of advanced hatchery principles and techniques in clam culture improvement studies has been carried out in both Vietnam and Australia (2) Successful demonstration of clam production models were conducted at provincial level (3) Four new clam hatcheries were established for commercial supply of clam spat and one R&D facility cum clam hatchery was established at Aquaculture Sub Institute of North Central (ARSINC),Vietnam The following report (Milestone 14, Completion Report 2009) presents the progress made in completion of all milestones in Schedule 1, Scope of Services, and Annex of Schedule Table of Milestones and in relation to the Objectives described in the Project Logframe of the Project document All planned milestones have been completed to the satisfaction of the CARD Project Management Unit (as judged by payment for all milestones achieved) The Project Leader Dr Martin Kumar, SARDI and Project Director, Mr Chi Chu Thiet, Vietnam gratefully acknowledge the support that CARD has provided in bringing this project to fruition Executive summary This report presents information on the final outcome of the CARD project, “Development of clam culture for improvement and diversification of livelihoods of the poor coastal communities in Central Vietnam(Project No: 027/05VIE)” which was commenced in April 2006 and completed in December 2009 The goal of the project is to make significant contribution to Government of Vietnam’s Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS), which are aligned with CARD program strategic framework Project aims to provide poor fisher community a sustainable alternative income and food security The following objectives were set for the Project: (1) Develop and extend clam hatchery technology using updated marine hatchery facility for mass production spats (2) Develop and extend grow out technology fitting to different environmental and ecological conditions (3) evaluate project impact on poor community in the project area The Project operated over six provinces, namely Thanh Hoa, Nghe an, Ha tinh, Quang binh, Quang trij, and Thua thien-Hue This report outlines the Progress made in achieving these objectives, and indicates the Milestone reports in which each of these objectives is discussed in detail There is no doubt that this Project has achieved all its aims and, in some aspects, exceeded expectations The project had three distinct phases During the first year, work concentrated on the technology development through adaptive research in hatchery and husbandry technology In the second year, the work focused on farm trials which were conducted with farmer participation, which fine tuned the technology and facilitated formulation of production manuals In the third year, the work concentrated on extension of technology through expanded through training and farmer participation trials There was flooding due cyclone and heavy rain which affected coastal aquaculture in general This natural calamity interrupted our on-farm trials in some provinces However, work was successfully completed in forth year ( six months extension provided by CARD administration) Project impact survey clearly indicated that this project has played a key role in significantly improving and expanding the clam culture industry within poor coastal communities of North Central Vietnam Clam culture practice is rapidly expanding in others areas of Vietnam The implementation of this project directly contributed to the improvement of productivity, income and the creation of additional employment This project provided an opportunity to utilize unused coastal land and transformed into a productive clam culture aquaculture venture For the first time in Vietnam, the practice of clam culture in ponds has been successfully introduced under this project This pond clam culture is a new concept which is gaining momentum in Vietnam This type of clam culture provides a new lease of life for coastal fish farmers who were heavily affected by the loss of prawn stocks due to disease The clam culture provides an alternative use for land and addition income through rotational crops in prawn farms Capacity building activities focused on establishing infrastructure activities and training Clam seed production from hatcheries started in 2008 from the first government hatchery established at ARSINC research facility under this CARD project Since then following four hatcheries established (i) Hoang Thanh Fisheries Seed Production Centre (Thanh Hoa province); (ii) Hai Tuan Fisheries Seed Production Hatchery (Ninh Binh province); (iii) Van Xuan Fisheries Seed Production Hatchery (HCM City); and (iv) Aquaculture Research Sub Institute for North Central Vietnam (ARSINC) A total of 19 staffs have been provided 4998 days working opportunity for different activities under this project 12 ARSINC technical officers were trained in clam hatchery and culture techniques during the period of the project implementation Six of the twelve technical officers received training from Australia Over 200 farmers including 36 farms participated in the demonstration and received technical training in clam farming ARSINC has the capability in designing, operating and managing aspects of both commercial grow-out and seed production In addition, communication skills of ARSINC staff have been improved through training provided in Australia and working with international experts On the other hand, students from the University had completed their B.Sc thesis on clam hatchery production under supervision of ARSINC/SARDI and students from local college had selected for internship program related clam culture activities in the experiment site These students successfully defended their thesis and achieved excellent results Introduction & Background The people in Northern Central coastal areas of Vietnam have very little productive land, and the marine aquatic resources that are an important part of people’s livelihoods in this area are overexploited About 80% of the households in coastal communities rely heavily on income from fishing Almost all coastal communes rely on fish capture and associated activities for their livelihoods due to the lack of agricultural land In recent times natural marine resources have declined due to over fishing, destruction of mangroves and construction of large shrimp ponds1 Project aims to provide poor fisher community a sustainable alternative income and food security Bivalve culture is a promising activity as it has a high total value despite a low production rate Clam culture is the most profitable activity However, clam culture has the disadvantage that it relies mainly on the capture of seed from nature Seed production and integration culture systems have been poorly investigated Currently, farmers are making total use of a flat tidal zone for clam culture This project titled “Development of clam culture for improvement and diversification of livelihoods of the poor coastal communities in Central Vietnam” was jointly undertaken by Aquaculture Research Sub Institute for North Central Vietnam (ARSINC) and South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) had attempted to address the technical issues in production clam seed for aquaculture and also improve the clam culture technique 4.1 Objectives and Outputs of Project Project listed main objectives which were planned to be achieved over the period from 2006 to 2009 These were as follows: (1) Develop and extend clam hatchery technology using updated marine hatchery facility for mass production spats Sustainable Aquaculture for Poverty Alleviation–1 SAPA Publishing house: Agriculture, Hanoi, 2001 (2) Develop and extend grow out technology fitting to different environmental and ecological conditions (3) evaluate project impact on poor community in the project area In summary following are the key outcomes • • • • • • • • Development of Hatchery technology of hard clam (M.lyrata) in the North Central Vietnam Development of aquaculture technology of hard clam in pond with differences modals such as: clam cultured with prawn (polyculture), clam cultured in canals with prawn farm effluent, clam monoculture in pond and rotational culture with prawn crop Development of improved aquaculture technology of hard clam in intertidal areas with the difference sizes and densities of clam seed Over 200 farmers including 36 farms participated in the demonstration and received technical training in clam farming Four clam commercial hatcheries established one clam research development facility including clam hatchery established in ARSINC 19 technical officers were trained in clam hatchery and culture techniques during the period of the project implementation students from the University had completed their B.Sc thesis on clam hatchery production under supervision of ARSINC/SARDI and students from local college had selected for internship program related clam culture activities in the experiment site Within each objectives there were a series of activities associated with milestones and expected outputs, and these log frame (Table of Milestones and Project Logframe) and provided in detail in following section The adoption rate and project impact details are provided in the validation report ( Milestone 13) 4.2 Implementation Approach and Strategy The project had three distinct phases During the first year work focused on technology development through adaptive research in hatchery and husbandry technology In the second year, the work concentrated on-farm trials, which fine tuned the technology and facilitated formulation of production manuals In the third year, work focused on extension of technology through expanded farmer participation trials and training However, due to flooding ( cyclone and heavy rain) the expanded trials were interrupted in some places which were successfully completed in the fourth year Project impact was also assessed during the fourth year The stakeholder participatory approach enabled the development not only in enhancing the capacity of the research institutions but also all other key stakeholders This approach was aimed to benefit both rural economical development (by improving stake holder benefits) and improvement in environmental sustainability Institutional capacity building included improving the existing hatchery facilities and establish new hatcheries; local training for farmers in calm production models and hatchery technology; and overseas training for the staff in the areas of live feed maintenance, data processing and database management 4.3 Implementation Methodologies A detailed implementation method including experimental design was approved by CARD technical committee and presented in the project proposal An outline of the implementation method is presented in this report (i) Hatchery technology development Key scientific information required to fill the gap for the development of hatcheries was obtained though conducting appropriate experiments and trials The main objective was to produce M lyrata seed through artificial propagation Specific objectives were: to determine optimum conditions in particular temperature and water quality, optimum feed requirements; optimum larval density and resettlement density The hatchery experiment was carried out at the marine hatchery in Cua lo town, Nghean province The hatchery obtained brood stocks from natural waters The brood stock was held in conditioning water temperatures to (temperatures which stimulate active gametogenesis) and fed supplementary algae until their gonads matured Properly conditioned adults were stimulated to spawn by subjecting them to a rapid increase in water temperature The first year focused on the development of a viable clam hatchery technology for mass production of clam spats A hatchery manual was prepared for clam culture (ii ) Culture type development: The main research in pond culture type was concentrated on the suitability of substrate, optimum stocking density, and stocking size All experiments were conducted in triplicate Water quality parameters, nutrients, biological parameters were also monitored at regular intervals Clam growth measurements such as weight (g) and size (mm) will be recorded fortnightly A total of 36 farmers (6 farmers from each province) participated in the on farm trials The outcome of the second year (from on farm trials) was production calm models in ponds and intertidal area Towards the end of 2009 a total of 200 farmers received clam culture training in ponds and intertidal area The following clam culture types were developed (a) Clam culture in intertidal area: The Inter tidal area is divided into three zones based on the tidal influence for clam culture (b) Shrimp and clam polyculture: Simultaneous culture of prawn and clams was undertaken with a view to generate additional income (c) Alternative/rotation crop: Clam culture was under taken after the pawn harvest as a rotational crop (d) Clam monoculture ponds (e) Clam culture in canals using prawn farm effluent (iii) Evaluation and analysis: The socio-economic data was collected from the families involved in the project trials before and after the trials for comparison and impact assessment was carried out The results of this investigation was included in the validation report (Milestone 13) and submitted 10 Figure 6: Survival rate of two clam species at the end of the trial (P ≤ 0.01) • Clam polyculture in pond 2.1.3 Environmental parameters The environment factors such as water temperature, pH and salinity (Table 4) were regarded as the ideal conditions for clam development, except for low salinity level (0‰) in September because of heavy and consistent rainfall along with big thunderstorm resulted in low pH (6.70±0.01) The average water temperature fluctuated from 22.33±0.75 to 33.50±0.710C, relatively low compared to the normal water temperature in the south of Vietnam The concentration of nutrients in pond was 0.1-0.29 mg/l for total phosphorous, 6.0-31.4 mg/l for total nitrogen Chlorophyll-a concentration was approximately 22.20-45.80 mg/l The relatively high level of chlorophyll-a due to increased nutrient input to pond Table 4: Environmental parameters in clam polyculture model during the trial Variable Sal pH Temp Total P Total N Chlo-a ( C) (mg/l) (mg/l) (mg/l) (‰) 15/5 9.43±0.48 7.66±0.11 29.57±0.87 0.10±0.010 6.00±1.20 22.20±1.20 15/6 12.77±0.48 7.87±0.07 32.23±0.44 0.12±0.002 21.60±2.10 25.30±1.15 15/7 18.25±0.72 7.92±0.11 33.50±0.71 0.18±0.006 31.40±2.60 22.60±1.32 15/8 13.83±0.99 7.70±0.08 28.42±0.87 0.29±0.007 22.50±2.09 45.80±2.46 15/9 0.67±0.67 6.77±0.07 22.33±0.33 0.10±0.009 10.80±1.10 25.80±1.86 37 2.1.4 Growth and survival rates Figure and shows that the trend of the weight gain and specific growth rate (SGR) of M lyrata and M meretrix was the same during the period of the demonstration The highest weight gain and SGR obtained in August for both clam species when farmer harvested all prawns in pond However, those figures decreased dramatically when salinity went down to zero in the end of August and September Overall, the total weight gain of M lyrata was significant higher than M meretrix (Figure 7) because the higher SGR of M lyrata was reported (Figure 8) The results suggest that M lyrata is more suitable species to integrate with prawn culture than M meretrix Figure 7: Weight gain of clam species culture in pond with prawn during demonstration 38 Figure 8: Specific growth rate of clam species culture in pond with prawn during demonstration Figure 9: Biomass gain of both clam species integrated culture with prawn in pond 39 Figure 10: Survival rate of both clam species integrated culture with prawn in pond (P