NU researching towards better shrimp

The researchers of the Zoology department of Sri Acharya Nagarjuna University (NU), led by professor M K Durga Prasad, have joined an international exercise to propagate cultivation of a new and better variety of shrimp called 'large branchiods'.

The world campaign is led by Dumont, a professor at Belgium University, who is an authority on this shrimp.

The NU researchers are working on appropriate techniques for culture development, and rearing of this shrimp variety.

They are also exploring suitable habitats for it in Andhra Pradesh and studying the shrimp's biodiversity and DNA patterns. Stephen Weeks, professor of Arkansas University, US, has come forward to collaborate in the study.

"Branchiods are used as an essential lipid feed in poultry and pisciculture industries to achieve remarkable yields. Hatcheries in India, every year, import live artemias cyst (brine shrimp), a branchiod variety (size 0.8 mm), and its processed egg deposits, worth millions of dollars, from the US and Belgium and other western countries. They are a live feed, priced at $400-600 a kg, used as a much sought after food for budding fish and other shrimp. If our farmers grow large branchiods, bulk of foreign exchange can be saved with simultaneous increase in our shrimp exports," said Durga Prasad

A branchiod variety called 'fairy shrimp' (streptocephalids) is cultured all over the world on a massive scale for use as a delicious and nutritive food, particularly in developed countries.

"Large branchiods live in fresh water as well as hypersaline waters. They can survive in ephemeral waters and withstand severe dry conditions by laying resting eggs (dormant). Scientists have traced the fossils of eggs of this shrimp variety placed millions of years ago," he said.

According to him, large branchiods are richer in protein content by at least 40 per cent than either tiger prawn or scampi. The three characteristics that make large branchiods better than all shrimp varieties are: they lay thousands of eggs in one clutch (fecundity), they grow at a faster rate up to a size of 1.5-2 cm in 20 days and their survival rate is as high as 75-85 per cent.

Harmful biomass produced by branchiods is insignificant when compared with that produced by tiger prawn, scampi and fish.

"Another advantage is that large branchiods can be cultured at any place - indoor, unused areas, quarry pools, excavated ditches in hillocks and even ponds,"

Durga Prasad said. The department is also planning to organise an international large branchiods symposium at NU.