Dweep - Carp Grower Feed

Andaman and Nicobar Island aquaculture are known for its huge demand for freshwater fishes as the settler population prefers freshwater fishes than the abundantly available marine fishes across the archipelago. The ever-growing demand of freshwater fishes holds a great potential for the Island farmers to venture into the domain of freshwater aquaculture. In freshwater aquaculture, around 60% of the operational cost is spent on feed and feeding management practices which are also considered as a critical input for the successful aquaculture practices. The extensive method of fish farming with less or no inputs and lack of knowledge on supplementary feeding is the main reason behind 8 to 10 times lower freshwater fish production in the Islands. At present, the expansion of fish culture has been severely hampered due to lack of good quality fish feeds. With this background, a small scale fish feed mill was established by ICAR-CIARI with a production capacity of 80 to 100 kg per hour and CIARI-Carp Grower Feed has been developed. The carp grower feed was formulated with 25% protein and 6% lipid content which can be fed to the Indian major carps from fingerling to adult stages.

Benefit:Proper feeding practices enables the farmers to increase the stocking density of fishes thereby enhance the unit production in existing culture system. The developed technology will be disseminated to the interested stakeholders in order to promote feed-based aquaculture in these Islands. Using the locally available feed ingredients, the farmers will be able to produce fish feed at an affordable price resulting in proper feeding of fishes which leads to increased production as well as development of aquaculture sector in the Islands.

Source : Contact person with Name, Designation e-mail and phone no: Dr. K. Saravanan, Scientist E-mail: saravanan.k@icar.gov.in Phone number: 9531956448