Whither Aquaculture R&D? Results from a Delphi Study

In the summer of the year 2008 a worldwide online Delphi study on the future of R&D in aquaculture was conducted. The Delphi method is widely used to survey experts on the anticipated developments within a specific domain. We employ this method to ascertain the likely future directions of aquaculture research in developed, high-income countries. For the convenience of our respondents we conducted the survey on the web. Results of the survey show that aquaculture experts agree that aquaculture research in general has made substantial achievements and will continue to make even more achievements in the future and also aquaculture research achievements will have very large impact on the productivity of the aquaculture farm as well as on the quality of fish produced in aquaculture systems. This paper presents the first descriptive results of the Delphi study.