A Case Study: Fish seed nursing by farmers of Udaipur, South Tripura, India

Abstract

Seed nursing is a useful and economically viable practice through which fish farmers are able to make adequate amount of profit in very short period of time. In Tripura many fish farmer livelihood is dependent on seed nursing and its marketing and they get a good amount of profit out of that. The study was performed for a period of 6 months to understand and highlight the seed nursing practices whether a profitable venture or not. After 60 days of seed rearing period farmers are getting around 2-3 lakhs of fish seed from 4 lakhs of spawn with a survival rate of more than 50%. Farmers gets around 75- 80 thousand Rupees as gross income from the selling of fish seed and they are making a profit of 45-50 thousand Rupees from each seed nursing cycle after excluding all the expenses incurred in the form of buying fish spawn, feeds, netting materials, harvesting cost etc. As seed nursing don’t require large water bodies it can be a better option for small fish farmers who are having small water holdings. Farmers can do three to four harvesting in a single year so from a limited space of water body they can earn more money in a very short period of time. Seed nursing can ultimately solve the problem of seed availability in market and leads to increase the overall fish production.