The Institute of Aquaculture, College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences (CFOS-IA), UP Visayas has reached out to more educators, through its extension program titled “Training of Educators in Aquatic Mainstream Science (TEAMS).”
Aimed to boost the research and instruction capacities of schools that provide fisheries and other related programs, TEAMS trained 26 faculty members on its third and fourth training held on July and August, respectively this year conducted at the CFOS-IA and National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (NIMBB) laboratories in UPV Miagao campus.
TEAMS is CFOS-IA’s extension program dedicated to improving the skills and knowledge of educators in molecular biology and biotechnology, aquaculture, and fisheries through the conduct of trainings, seminars, and workshops.
Held on July 3-7, 2023, 21 participants that included the faculty members from Northern Iloilo State University (NISU), Mindanao State University-Lanao del Norte Agricultural College (MSU-LNAC), Southern Leyte State University (SLSU), and University of Saint La Salle – Bacolod (USLS-Bacolod) participated in the “Training on Fish Curatorial Procedures and DNA Barcoding.”
Practicum students of USLS-Bacolod and project-based researchers and graduate students of UPV-CFOS also joined the third TEAMS training.
The participants learned about the Principle and Applications of DNA Barcoding, Advances in DNA Barcoding, Species Identification of Invertebrates, and Applications of Molecular Methods in Microalgal Research. They also had practical applications on the basics of fish sample collection, fixation, DNA extraction, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), gel electrophoresis, and DNA sequence assembly, alignment, and phylogenetic tree construction.
Meanwhile, the fourth TEAMS training was on Fish Diseases and Nutrition conducted on August 7-11, 2023.
Five faculty members from Carlos Hilado Memorial State University in Negros Occidental and the San Joaquin School of Fisheries in San Joaquin, Iloilo participated in the training. They were taught about fish diseases and ways on how to detect them.
They also had hands-on sessions on microbiological and histological techniques and polymerase chain reaction (PCR).
The participants visited the facilities of the UPV-Regional Research Center and Philippine Genome Center (PGC) – Visayas located in the UPV Miagao campus.
Lat years, CFOS-IA initially conducted TEAMS I on April 27-29, 2022 to four (4) faculty members of San Joaquin School of Fisheries, San Joaquin, Iloilo while TEAMS II was held last July 11-29, 2022.
TEAMS II catered 10 educators from the President Ramon Magsaysay State University in Zambales, Zamboanga State College of Marine Sciences and Technology, Mindanao State University –Maguindanao, Mariano Marcos State University-Casat in Ilocos Norte, and Capiz State University from the Province of Capiz.
The undertaking was in collaboration with NIMBB and the UPV Museum of Natural Sciences (UPV-MNS).
As of this writing, the initiative had trained 40 participants in its two years of implementation. (With reports from CFOS-IA)
