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Vietnam Sturgeon Corporation has opened a VND1 trillion (USD47.6 million) sturgeon breeding farm in the central highlands province of Dak Lak.

Sturgeon have been successfully bred in Vietnam

The facility, located in the Buon Tu Srah hydropower plant reservoir in Lak District, is regarded as being the largest of its kind in the world, with an estimated capacity to house one million sturgeon fish.

In the first phase, the facility will house 40,000 fish and it will operate at its full capacity in the second phase.

This is the fifth sturgeon breeding facility to be built by the Vietnam Sturgeon Corporation. The company’s other facilities are located in the northern province of Bac Giang, the central provinces of Binh Thuan and Binh Dinh, and the central highlands province of Lam Dong.

In the next two years, the company plans to build between five and ten more sturgeon breeding centres in Dak Lak in order to raise the firm’s total caviar output to 1,000 tonnes per annum.

Currently, Dak Lak has nearly 37,000 hectares of water surface that offers great potential for aquaculture, of which irrigation and hydropower dams provide the most favourable conditions for sturgeon breeding.

The firm targets to become a leading global caviar exporter in the next three years.

Sturgeons mainly lives in cool water areas like the Caspian Sea and Black Sea waters in Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iran, and Ukraine.

There are two major methods of breeding sturgeons, in closed areas and in natural lakes.

Sturgeons are sold at between USD8,000 and USD12,000 per tonne while sturgeon eggs are marketed at from USD1,000-USD6,000 per kilo, reaching a peak of USD10,000 per kilo.

The Russian sturgeon breeding centre at Buon Tua Srah hydropower’s reservoir is the largest of its kind in the world

Caviar remains a world-class delicacy