Tilapia is a group of small and medium-sized fish, its appearance, individual size is somewhat similar to the crucian carp, fins thorny like Mandarin fish. At present, the main species of tilapia farmed in China are Nile tilapia, Orillia tilapia, Mozambique tilapia and various combinations of hybrid offspring.
Maoming, Guangdong Province, is a tropical monsoon warm humid climate with abundant light and rainfall, and the city's average annual temperature is about 23 degrees Celsius. From the 1950s the introduction of tilapia aquaculture, through the development of more than a decade, the city's tilapia aquaculture area of 220,000 acres, accounting for about 58% of the city's freshwater aquaculture area, with an annual output of 180,000 tons of tilapia, accounting for the province's production of 1/3 of the country 1/6, the annual output value of more than 1.5 billion yuan, and has become the largest tilapia producing areas. In January this year, Maoming City, China Aquatic Products Circulation and Processing Association awarded the "China Tilapia Capital" title.
Maoming City, there are 28 tilapia seedling breeding farms, including the construction of two national tilapia seed farms, the construction of a provincial tilapia seed farm, with an annual output of 900 million high-quality tilapia fry. A number of tilapia all-weather hatcheries and parent insulation greenhouses have been built, realizing the production of tilapia fry in 10 months of the year. By December 2008, the city had passed the pollution-free certification of 23 tilapia farms (enterprises), with an area of 26,000 mu. Tilapia export raw material record base area of 120,000 mu. Large tilapia processing and export enterprises are Jiahui Food, Changxing Food, Gali Food, Haimingwei Food 4. In addition, there are 3 enterprises under construction, including Maoming Green Life Garden, Gaozhou Longli, Huazhou Qunkang, etc. In 2008, 14,700 tons of tilapia processed products were exported, with foreign exchange earnings of 52.14 million US dollars. The city's tilapia farming households reached 15,586, creating 100,000 jobs, the number of people engaged in tilapia processing, transportation, sales of more than 10,000 people, the average annual income of 20,000 yuan or more. Tilapia industry has become one of the pillar industries in Maoming City for increasing farmers' income and exporting agricultural products.
In recent years, tilapia industry in Maoming City has gradually established a self-regulation of enterprises, inspection and quarantine departments to supervise the industry associations to guide the fisheries administrative departments as well as the service supervision of the four-level product quality and safety monitoring system. At the same time adhere to the construction of tilapia certification system, efforts to promote aquatic health breeding and standardized production. At present, 6 tilapia healthy aquaculture demonstration bases have been established, and 23 tilapia aquaculture bases have been recognized as provincial pollution-free origins; 13 tilapia products have passed the certification of pollution-free agricultural products by the Ministry of Agriculture; 88 tilapia aquaculture enterprises have become the export filing bases, with an area of more than 120,000 acres for export filing; and 6 products of 4 enterprises have been awarded the title of provincial famous-brand products, which has strongly guaranteed the quality and safety of tilapia. The quality and safety of tilapia is strongly guaranteed.