Prospectiva Tecnológica en Maricultura: Argentina en Contexto Global. I. Vigilancia Tecnológica.

BARÓN, PEDRO J.; BURGUENER, M.G.

Editorial Académica Española

Lugar: Saarbrücken; Año: 2017 p. 173

978-3-639-60419-1

Culture of marine species ? marine aquaculture ? in Argentina dates from the early 1900?s, when oster farming experiences stated in the port of San Antonio, Río Negro National Territory.After approximately one century, it is observed that neither marine aquaculture has consolidated as a sustainable productive activity, nor major technological innovations have been developed in order to place the country on a competitive position.Although the State has invested in R+D to promote and develop the activity, only starting in 2001 some few species have been successfully cultured at small comercial scale: the mussels Mytilus edulis (= Mytilus platensis) in Chubut Province and Mytilus galloprovincialis (= Mytilus chilensis) in Tierra del Fuego e Islas del Atlántico Sud Province, and the exotic oyster Crassostrea gigas in Buenos Aires Province. Culture technologies used are traditional: suspended long-line and surface platforms for mussel culture, and off-bottom structures in the case of the oysters. Other species have been cultured in Argentina at expermiental levels, including: plaices, a sea horse species, shrimps and brine shrimp (Artemia).In a recent effort (2011) from the governmental sector, the Network for Strenghtening the Patagonian Coastal Marine Aquaculture was created, under the promotion of CONICET (National Council of Scientific and Technical Research) and the provinces, to act as a cooperation instrument for marine aquaculture production. Posteriorly the development of marine aquaculture was promoted by the definition of the Social Productive Strategic Nucleous (SPSN) ?Ocean Resources Production and Processing? included in the National Plan of Science, Technology and Innovation INNOVATIVE ARGENTINA 2020, MINCyT). Also, the conduction of foresight excercises was recomended for each one of the SPSN included in the program.This work, denominated Technological Foresight Study of the Marine Culture in Argentina, takes the premise of the previous paragraph, starting from the present problematic of the productive activiy and from relevant aspects of its success in other countries, and arrives to results that are compared with others obtained from national and international experiences. Also, it concludes providing useful information to define whereto Argentina should drive its R+D+i efforts to give impulse to productive activities of the marine aquaculture value chain with competitive intelligence and international insertion.Argentina counts with scientific and technological potential, but its efforts in the realm of marine aquaculture are weak. When comparing technological areas of mussel and oyster culture that recieved most of the atention during 2009-2013 at a global level, the technological gap is ample in all aspects, mainly in the cultured organisms health evaluation and preservation technologies; nutrition, fattening and intrinsic quality tehcnologies, and reproduction technologies, as well as on studies on the farming environment, infrastructure, live-organisms transport and economic and finantial evaluation of production.At the global level, there are no doubts about the leadership of China as the major marine aquaculture productor, whom along with France and USA generate the highest valued productions due to their volumen, and publish the highest numbers of scientific and technological studies on marine aquaculture and patents of technological developments, fitting well their levels of production in contrast to other countries. In contrast, there are no registers of patents published in this period in which the requesting organisms belong to Argentina.Regarding the patented technological developments registered through the 2009-2013 period at international level, two thirds correspond to productive processess along with infrastructure and equipment, followed in importance by biotechnological / genetic (enzime development, genetic engineering and genetic mutation techniques) and feed / diet developments. Among cases observed in Latinoamerica, that from Chile, one of the largest mussel productors in the world, calls for attention due to its notoriously poor participation on scientific and techological studies on marine aquaculture of these organisms.Taking into consideration the results of the present analysis from the visión of Technological Management, and looking forwards to minimize the existing gaps in most of the technological areas of marine aquaculture in Argentina, the following recommendations are provided:?Pointing to differentiation strategies in selected species? marine aquaculture from the conceptual framework of Competitive Intelligence and the development of a regional strategy of International Insertion.?Ensuring the competitive advantages for the aquacultre of groups of organims identified as niches of interest.?Evaluating the industrial applicability of the selected culture types.?Detecting specific niches in the marine aquaculture chain within a scheme of transnational production. Visualizing oportunities in the fragmentation phenomena and on the delocalization of production, combined with oursourcing.?Increasing cooperation and interaction with entities showing recognized trajectories and leading the technological developments in marine aquaculture issues as a key factor for learning and training.?Sistematically incorporating techniques of Technology Foresight, Technolgical Surveillance and Competitive Intelligence in decisión making.