New hatchery tech developed for picnic seabream fish says CMFRI

    Kochi, Mar 4 (PTI) The Central Marine Fisheries
Research Institute (ICAR-CMFRI) on Thursday said it has
developed a hatchery technology for picnic seabream
(Acanthopagrus berda), a commercially important marine food
fish.
    The CMFRI has described it as a "breakthrough" in
diversification of the country's mariculture activities as it
is expected to open up enormous scope for the countrys
mariculture ventures in near future through species
diversification.
    Also known as black seabream and goldsilk seabream,
the fish is known for its excellent meat quality and high
economic value.
    It has high demand in the domestic market with a price
of around Rs 450 to 500 per kg.
    Locally called as 'karutha yeri', the fish is an
excellent species for mariculture owing to its faster growth
rate, strong resistance to diseases and ability to cope up
with wide variations in environmental parameters such as
salinity and temperature, a CMFRI release said here on
Thursday.
    According to Dr A Gopalakrishnan, Director of CMFRI,
with the development of hatchery technology for picnic
seabream, Indian mariculture is poised for a new surge with
exponential increase in marine finfish production.
    He said the next task of the institute is to
standardise the farming protocol of the fish as no record of
breeding and aquaculture of this fish is available in in the
country.
    "Considering the characteristics of the fish,
mariculture of picnic seabream is expected to be highly
prospective in terms of attracting commercial benefits and
meeting growing seafood demand in the near future," he said.
    Gopalakrishnan said India targets 4 to 5 million
metric tonnes of fish production in the next 10 years from
mariculture.
    Species diversification for mariculture is primarily
aimed at achieving this target by enhancing the marine cage
farming system across the coastal states of the country, he
said.
    This is the seventh marine food fish of which breeding
technology was developed by the CMFRI.
    It took around three years for the CMFRI scientists to
develop the seed production technology for this fish.
    Earlier, the institute had succeeded in brood stock
development of fishes like cobia, silver pompano, Indian
pompano, orange-spotted grouper, pink ear emperor and John's
snapper.
    CMFRI said it would transfer these technologies to
those interested in commercial production of the seeds.PTI TGB
SS
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(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)