Brackish water farming in India during the past four decades has evolved from age-old traditional systems of ‘pokkali’ in kerela, ‘bheries’ in WestBengal, ‘gheris’ in Odisha,’kharlands’ in Karnataka and ‘Khazans’ in Goa coasts to modern semi-intensive practice. During the 90’s brackish water aquaculture development received a huge impetus on semi intensive shrimp farming with the demonstration project by the Andhra Pradesh Shrimp Seed Production Supply and Research Centre (TASPARC), funded by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Govt. of India. Commercial scale shrimp farming started gaining roots only after 1988-1989 and the semi-intensive farming technology demonstrated production levels reaching 4-6 tons/ha Giant Tiger shrimp (Penaeus mondon) became the mainstay of brackish water aquaculture in India and the area under shrimp farming showed remarkable growth rate till 1995.
During the initial years of semi-intensive brackish water aquaculture development in the country, disease outbreaks linked to crop failures were not there, while disease conditions such as soft shell syndrome, bacterial septicaemia etc, caused limited problems in grow-out aquaculture. Major setback due to disease struck during 1994 with the outbreaks of white spot syndrome or white spot disease (WSD), caused by one of the largest double stranded DNA viruses, the white spot syndrome virus (WSSV). It has been devastating our shrimp farming sector since then. The profitability and sustainability of tiger shrimp farming was in question due to the new disease threat and hike in input costs and decreasing sale value. The development of Indian shrimp farming was getting affected and farmers were looking for an alternative model. Many brackish water ponds, which also suffered setbacks due to white tail disease (WTD), caused by an RNA virus, the Macrorachium rosenburgi inoda virus(MRNV), and the scampi farming never recovered. Later on since 1998, the black tiger shrimp farming continued to face challenges such as loose shell syndrome (LSS), followed b the monodon slow growth syndrome (MSGS) since 1998, the black tiger shrimp farming continued to face challenges such as loose shell syndrome(LSS) , followed by the monodon slow growth syndrome(MSGS) since 2004 in black tiger shrimp farming. Altogether in the backdrop of the disease scenario, shrimp farmers were demoralized in that the crop was no more an assured one.
Source: Aqua Aquaria