OUR CORRESPONDENT
ITANAGAR: Arunachal Pradesh Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Minister Tage Taki On Monday said that the state can turn into an exporter of inland cold-water fishes if correct methodology and technology to harness the huge potential available is used.
Speaking at the 3-day training on harvest and post-harvest technologies for Lower Subansiri district under North East Hill component organised by ICAR–Central Institute of Fisheries Technology (ICAR-CIFT), Visakhapatnam Research Centre at Ziro, the district headquarters, the minister said that the state has a huge potential for inland cold-water fishery especially, at Tawang, Bomdila, Menchuka and Ziro.
“We need to be proactive and encourage our fish farmers to breed and rear exotic cold water fishes like trout which is highly priced at the national and international markets,” he said, and added that the fishery department is willing to provide all required technical knowledge, inputs and logistics to support the cause of fishery revolution in the state.
Appreciating the handholding support of ICAR-CIFT for the growth and development of fishery sector in the state, Taki informed that Lower Subansiri district was coming up in a big way in fishery sector.
“With success stories of many fish farmers from Ziro and Yachuli, people are slowly getting inspired to take up fishery as a business model and source of income,” he informed and added that a catch of 11.5 kg fish was recorded from the water conservation project of Siikhey Lake at Ziro recently.
The minister urged the trainers from ICAR-CIFT to review the effectiveness of the training after a few months.
Ziro Valley is famed in the country for its unique paddy-cum-pisiculture. However, due to inbreeding of the commonly grown common carp variety of fish at the paddy fields for a long time, quality of the fishes had reduced and so common carp had to be replaced by Amur carp which has revived the quality of the fishes, Taki informed. He added that such training programmes are needed to provide correct perspectives and mid-way corrections to fish farmers to avoid losses.
The minister also informed that if the training programme and the equipment provided by ICAR-CIFT for value addition of the fish products were a success at Ziro valley, the fishery department would keep an annual budget the following year to replicate the same in other parts of the state.
In his keynote address, Scientist-in-charge of ICAR-CIFT Dr U Sreedhar informed about the role of the institute in development of fishery sector in the country.
Founded in 1957, ICAR-CIFT has proven its excellence in development of fishing and fish processing technologies. During the last 62 years, ICAR-CIFT has made commendable scientific contributions in the fields of fish harvesting, processing, packaging, product development, quality assurance, fishery by-products and fishery waste utilisation, Dr Sreedhar informed.
Highlighting that the prime target of ICAR-CIFT was to facilitate sustainable harvesting and total utilization of fishery resources through innovations in harvest and post-harvest technology, Dr Sreedhar informed that during the training programme, the team would aid and provide trainings to fish farmers on technical inputs on fish harvesting, value addition, fish engineering, waste utilization, fishery health care, ready to cook products, quality assurance, packaging, harvest technologies and business incubation.
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