February 23, 2016

Nutriad sponsors Aqua India 2016

Showing its commitment to India's aquaculture industry, Nutriad provided a Gold Sponsorship to Aqua India 2016, a bi-annual event organised by the Indian Society of Aquaculture Professionals (SAP), held January 29-30 in Vishakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

The conference focused on the theme "Indian Aquaculture: Assuming Responsibilities & Adapting to Changes."

"Seafood exports from India have increased fivefold in the last 15 years reaching 6.5 billion USD, converting India into the fourth largest global seafood exporter," said Ms. Leena Nair, chairman of Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA). 67% of the export value is shrimp of which 77% is farmed.

However, increased production costs and diseases are likely to slow Indian's shrimp production in 2016. "A more than 10% production decline due to flooding and disease outbreaks was already seen in 2015. A recovery is likely to be marginal due to lower returns from farming," predicted S. Muthukaruppan, president of SAP.

"White spot virus (WSSV) continues to be the predominant threat to farmed shrimp in India, but new diseases are increasingly important too," according to Dr. Shankar Alavandi, principal scientist at CIBA. Surveillance programmes have revealed new diseases such as the running mortality syndrome (RMS), white faeces syndrome, and Enterocytozoon hepatopenaei, a microsporidian causing slow growth and bad feed conversions.

India still has an enormous potential to expand production of Penaeus vannamei into new farming areas in the states of West Bengal, Odisha and Gujarat.

During the interactive sessions at Aqua India, participants expressed the need for increasing capacity of quarantine and broodstock multiplication centres, enhanced bio-security measures to avoid spreading new diseases, genetic programmes, and new technologies to control microbial development in pond systems including probiotics and specific functional feeds.