Low count shrimp farming-a success story

Abstract

Aquaculture of shrimps is an important farming system in the coastal areas of India. It has been significantly contributing for the rural development through employment generation, income, livelihood development and discouragement of migration to urban areas, to some extent. Additionally, through exports it provides a sum of Rs.6,000 crores to the national economy. Tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon), an indigenous shrimp, has been the only candidate shrimp species cultured by our farmers till 2009. However, due to mismanagements at hatchery and farm levels a formidable viral disease entered into our water bodies to the extent that most of our natural shrimp stock has been found infected. The sector was in crisis and this led to better management practices for seed production and farming which were developed and popularised among the farmers. The farmers also realised that quality seed would minimise the disease risk by 50% and majority of them followed good shrimp aquaculture practices. Nevertheless, persistence of white spot disease and continued havocs, diverted global shrimp aquaculture towards Pacific white shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) due to availability of its Specific Pathogen Free (SPF) broodstock and market scenario. Reacting to the eagerness of the farmers to adopt high volume shrimp aquaculture, the Government of India has introduced the exotic Pacific white shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) for commercial production in 2009. As expected, the Pvannamei has revived Indian shrimp farming to its pre-1995 status with an estimated production of 60,000 tonnes from about 5000 ha of registered farms in 2011-12.