KOCHI: Ending a decade’s slide in the production of black tiger shrimps, Kerala is experiencing a fruitful comeback of the high-health seafood after Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) launched the supply of black tiger shrimp seeds to farmers this year.
It was on February 18 that Kochi-headquartered MPEDA began the supply of black tiger shrimp seeds from its new multispecies aquaculture complex (MAC) at Vallarpadam.
MPEDA chairman K S Srinivas, in an official release, said the black tiger prawn supplied from the nine-acre MAC has been showing excellent performance in various parts of the state. “We knew that increased production of the black tiger variety can boost India’s shrimp exports in the long run. We are seeing the early signs of it happening,” he added. The `7.26-crore MAC, which was inaugurated on December 8 last year, features a hatchery with an annual production capacity of 20 million black tiger shrimp seeds besides nurseries for four varieties of fin fishes.
The release quoted a farmer C V Mathew, who has been into shrimp cultivation for 16 years in his native Kumbalangi suburb, as saying "black tiger seeds from MAC attained 25-gram size in the first 50 days. In 86 days, it reached an average size of 40 grams,” he said adding “I have never experienced such a growth rate.”
It was from 2010 that the black tiger shrimp, an endemic species to south-east Asia, began to face a slump in its traditional reputation as a major variety of cultivated shrimp item in India after aquaculture farmers in the country began to focus on the exotic 'vannamei' species of shrimps in a big way.