Dr. ROMI NOVRIADI

As an aquaculturist, I realized that feed accounts for more than 50 percent of the production cost. The use of fish meal as the primary protein source in fish diet responsible for this high cost since they contribute about 70% of the actual feed cost. Clearly, this is a non-sustainable situation as global aquaculture increase in size and diversity of commercial species. However, since most of my education and my professional work experience has been as a technical staff to produce the live feed for fish larvae and control the health management system in production site. Thus, I wanted to explore the wide variety of valuable ingredients to potentially replace the use of fish meal as the primary protein source and learn some processing methods to produce high quality of animal foods.

 

I recently joined with aquaculture nutrition group in Auburn University and during my first year, I have completed four research project designed to evaluate the soy-based diets with various levels and type of advance soybean meal on the growth performance, proximate composition, blood biochemistry as well as liver and intestinal histological alterations in Florida pompano (Trachinotus carolinus). However, this research use the diet processed under laboratory scale and controlled environment. With the world of aquaculture constantly changing and develop, it is very important for me to learn the feed production process in commercial scale and other factors that influence the quality.

 

Animal Food Manufacturing seems to be the class that I need to challenge myself as an aquaculture nutritionist and produce a work that reflect the basic principles for animal food manufacturing practices. It is very important for all people who want to involve in feed manufacturing to learn how to prepare the ingredient, manufacture, process, pack, transport, distribute and monitor the quality of the animal food. As the technical staff, we also need to be qualified to receive, sampling and hold the ingredients as well as apply the biosecurity program to avoid any contamination during the manufacturing process.

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The biggest challenge I experienced during the class is try to imagine the manufacturing process as I am not directly involved in the real production process. The equipment and production system used in the commercial scale is very different with laboratory scale. Demonstration use of “real” ingredients distributor, mixer, hammer and roller mill, conditioning, cooling and packaging system during the laboratory session become the primary means for me to evaluate the entire process. As the class progressed, I felt more confident with my knowledge and reassured about the feed production procedures I had been using in my project. But when I came to the part of memorizing each type of equipment, I had to take a deep breath as I need more time to know better every part and structure of the machine. The more I visit and involve in real production process, the more it will enhance my knowledge level, as well as my confidence in explaining each part and machine use for the production process.

 

Despite my worries on equipment part, I feel this class was very wonderful, and I learned a tremendous amount of knowledge. I feel very comfortable with my knowledge on feed processing, especially for the commercial scale. I will use my knowledge to produce a better feed and concentrate on making small scale project for feed production to improve the aquaculture production.