The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) is developing an automated system that could make the counting of milkfish fry faster, more accurate and less labor-intensive for local hatcheries.

The M-Eye Fry Counter, a machine vision and automation technology being developed by the DoST-Metals Industry Research and Development Center, has already produced a working prototype and achieved an accuracy rate of more than 95 percent during initial testing.

The project, titled “M-Eye Fry Counter: An Innovative Machine Vision-based Precision Fry Counting Solution to Streamline Milkfish Fry Distribution,” is funded by the DoST-Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development.

It aims to provide hatcheries with a non-invasive, highly accurate and cost-effective system for counting milkfish fry, or fingerlings.

The Philippines requires about five billion milkfish fry annually. However, existing manual counting methods remain labor-intensive and have limited operational efficiency, while imported fry-counting systems can be expensive and often lack local technical support.

The project team has conducted several rounds of testing, with the prototype recording an accuracy rate of more than 95 percent.

Further refinements are being undertaken to improve the system’s accuracy. Evaluations were made by comparing the automated counts with manual counting, which the team noted can itself produce errors and affect the baseline used to assess the technology.

One of the major improvements in newer versions of the prototype has been a significant reduction in counting time, highlighting its potential to improve hatchery efficiency.

Additional stress tests and experimental trials are planned as the technology moves toward field testing. The team is also exploring ways to lower production costs through local fabrication and bulk manufacturing.

The technology remains in the research and development stage, with further field validation needed in various milkfish-producing areas to assess its effectiveness, reliability and adaptability under different hatchery conditions.

The project team also clarified that the automated system is not intended to replace hatchery workers.

Instead, automating fry counting is expected to allow workers and hatchery operators to devote more time to other essential hatchery and farm management activities.