Mpeda to expand farming of new variety Tilapia fish

Annual revenues from the variety pegged at Rs 700 cr

The Marine Products Export Development Authority (Mpeda) has chalked out a plan to culture Nilotics variety of Tilapia fish in Kerala. The authority has identified farm area across 12,000 hectares in the districts of Palakkad, Ernakulam, Kottayam and Alappuzha.

M Shaji, deputy director, Mpeda, said the Nilotics variety of Tilapia was seeing good demand not only in the local markets but also in the US and European Union. Mpeda projects an annual revenue of Rs 700 crore from rearing this variety.

The US had imported 22,000 tonne fillets of this fish from the southeast Asian countries during 2012-13, it said.

The Kerala government recently issued an order allowing the farming of Nilotics variety, which is a foreign breed.

Farmers in Ernakulam and Alappuzha districts had already started farming Nilotics (popularly called 'Nile Tilapia') by importing the brood stock from Malaysia.

Shaji said Nilotics was a fast growing variety as it attained a weight of 300-350 gm in just four months. In India, the Mossambicus variety of Tilapia was being widely cultured in states including Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha for the last 30 years.

It offers other advantages like the flesh is more whitish and tastier than Mossambicus. On average, five tonnes can be produced from a hectare in just eight months.

Farmers get an average price of Rs 150 -200 per kg and the production cost is rather low compared with other species of fish.

Part from Nile and Mossambicus, Blue Tilapia is also widely used for farming.

Tilapia, which is an African fish by origin, is mainly a scavenger type fish and requires less fish meal.

The Rajiv Gandhi Center for Aquaculture, Vijayawada, had started producing infants of this variety three years ago based on a technology adopted from the World Fish Centre in Malaysia. The centre already has a stock of around 1 million infants and is capable of meeting the demand from other states.

The annual global production of Tilapia is around 3.5 million tonnes and the estimated value is $3 billion. Around 20 countries are farming Tilapia, with China, Egypt, Indonesian Philippines, Thailand and Brazil taking the lead.