MADURAI: Aquaculture and fresh water prawn farming hold a lot of promise for the farmers and hence efforts must be made to give a momentum to the `blue revolution' in the State, experts said here on Wednesday.

Though there is a lot of potential for aquaculture, the area under production in the State at present was less compared to Andhra Pradesh, they said.

The experts were speaking at a farmers' meet on fresh water farming organised here by the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) and the Regional Centre (aquaculture), Thanjavur.

Inaugurating the meet, R. Dinakaran Michael, Director of Fish Immunology Centre, Lady Doak College, said only 1.5 lakh acres of land was under aquaculture production in Tamil Nadu while in Andhra Pradesh it was 2.5 lakh acres. Catching of fish from sea touched a peak and in the coming years it would come down. Hence, the only hope for procuring more fish would be through aquaculture, Dr. Michael said adding that a massive `blue revolution' would take place soon.

He said seafood exports earned Rs. 7,000 crores for the country and 80 per cent of this came from aquaculture.

India next to China

Now, India was next to China in aquaculture and in 2002-03 the total production stood at 30,000 tonnes. Farmers should take up fresh water prawn farming and aquaculture as only a small investment was needed. "It is a very suitable small scale industry and training is given by various organisations such as MPEDA," Dr. Michael said.

The NABARD Assistant General Manager, R. Srinivasan, said there were several finance schemes for farmers taking up aquaculture and the bank was attaching importance to the fisheries sector and fresh water farming. Marketing guidance and tie-ups were provided by MPEDA and farmers/hatcheries could use the bank's refinance schemes.

J. Vanangamudi, District Lead Manager, Canara Bank, said Rs. 819 crores would be made available as credit during 2005-06 of which Rs. 360 crores would be for agriculture schemes.

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