Commercial production of tiger shrimps seeds begins

INDIA - The Fisheries College and Research Institute has commenced commercial production of seeds of tiger shrimps on its Maritech Research Centre campus situated at Tharuvaikulam near here.

The hatchery for the purpose was established recently on the MRC premises at a cost of Rs.45 lakh allocated to the FCRI by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).

The unit was equipped with a seawater pumping and filtration system, two High Density Poly Ethylene (HDPE) lined sumps, ultra violet filters, cartridge filters, indoor and outdoor algal culture facilities, raceways to maintain brood stock, a spawning module, 20 larval rearing tanks of two tones capacity each and a laboratory to test water quality.

V.K. Venkataramani, Dean, FCRI, told The Hindu that the institute planned to produce shrimp seeds at the rate of two million seeds a year during the first year.

The harvest would be enhanced to 5 million seeds per annum from the subsequent year onwards.

The seeds were produced from the brood stock through various larval stages such as nauplius, zoea and mysis.

“We had been feeding the larvae with live planktons and micro encapsulated feeds in a certain quantity to get healthy seeds,” S. Felix, Head, MRC, said.

Mr. Felix said that the institute had taken steps to ensure that the seeds produced were free from viruses and fulfil nutritional requirements as well as health management protocols stipulated by the Government.

The entire seeds were made to undergo polymerized chain reaction (PCR) tests using thermal cycler.

“This would ensure that the seeds were not carrying any white spot syndrome virus, before they were being distributed to shrimp farmers,” Mr. Felix said.

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Commercial production of tiger shrimps seeds begins