viii Joanne G. Buchanan
in Ghana. Nearly 90% of aquaculture production comes from cages, and
reservoirs, dugouts and dams make up the reminder.
Although there has been a steady growth in farm establishment and
government efforts to promote fish farming, the sector is producing below
installed capacity. This is due to little development in removing or reducing
constraining factors to reasonable levels. Poor quality and inadequate supply
of fingerlings, inadequate technical know-how, inadequate extension services
and training have been the major challenges affecting aquaculture production
in Ghana. From the study, high cost of commercially available diets, lack of
access to funds, poor market of farmed fish products and poor management of
farms have been identified to be inhibiting the growth of the aquaculture
industry. These challenges coupled with unfavourable weather conditions t and
poor infrastructure lead to the increasing incidence of farm abandonment and
the entire aquaculture development.
The study also revealed that, most fish farms in Ghana are poorly
managed. This is due to the lack of technical know-how and unskilled labour
at the different levels of production. This has contributed massively to the
under development and negligible contribution of the sector to the overall fish
production and economic development in the country. Poor management can
be economically and environmentally injurious to the needs of aquaculture
sustainability and development, hence, fish farmers must focus on how to
equilibrate social and environmental needs.
Chapter 2 - The concept of phage therapy to control bacterial infection and
contamination was conceived about a century ago. It has now been more
important to understand this approach since drug resistant bacteria have
become more common and development of new antibiotics has become more
difficult. This article will cover the fundamental knowledge of phage infection
in bacterial cell and extends it to phage therapy by using a model of Vibrio-
phage, called VH-P, with its specific Vibrio harveyi host, VH 13- 1. The VH
13 - 1 was isolated and collected from luminescent black tiger shrimp. To test
the possibility of the use of permissive phage as a tool to treat the VH
contamination in shrimp ponds, a VH-P which is a temperate phage was tested
for its efficiency to kill the VH13-1. In the meantime VH16-1 which is not
infected by VH-P was used as a control. The authors’ study was conducted
with the MOI (multiple of infection) of 1-100. The success of the treatment is
determined if no VH bacterial colony is observed in the culture medium after
the phage treatment. The MOI of 20 resulted in the killing of all the VH13- 1
while MOI 10 was inconsistent because two of the three experiments showed
growth of bacterial colony and MOI of 1 resulted in significant survival of