Souvenir BRAQCON 2019

Abstract

Brackishwater environment is the transitional zone between marine and freshwater systems, and therefore, salinity of this system is often subjected to progressive variation between fresh and marine salinities. These environments are highly variable, and variation in the time of day and seasonal variations make this environment highly dynamic. Flooded rice field adjacent to the natural brackishwater areas were used to capture shrimp juveniles in many coastal states of India such as Kerala, Karnataka, Goa and West Bengal for centuries.Later, at the advent of frozen shrimp industry in India, the demand for large shrimp has increased considerably, and, therefore, it was essential to grow the shrimp in the farm to meet the demand of emerging export industry. Thus, the paddy field shrimp fishery has been evolved into a primitive form of aquaculture, where growing the shrimp seeds for couple of months without any feed or aeration. The first experimental shrimp aquaculture has been carried out by Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Cochin in 1963 (George et al., 1967), and seeded the way forward for brackishwater aquaculture research and development in India.