8
Shrimp Culture
A decade - long service to the shrimp sector India’s Aquatic Quarantine Facility has played a major role in pathogen control via rigorous disease screening and stringent quarantine protocols By M. C. Remany, Daly Cyriac, Sruthi Prem O. C, Kannan D, Razak Ali and Kandan S
MPEDA’s centralised Aquatic Quarantine Facility is a dedicated quarantine facility for all imports of broodstock to safeguard the industry from transboundary transfer of disease pathogens.
T
he Aquatic Quarantine Facility or more popularly known by its acronym, AQF in India's shrimp hatchery segment, is located at Neelankarai, Chennai, South Tamil Nadu. The facility is India’s one and only state-of-the art quarantine unit for shrimp. Over the last decade, it has played an important role in ensuring specific pathogen free (SPF) status of imported shrimp broodstock. AQF was established in 2009, when the Government of India permitted commercial culture of the Pacific white leg shrimp Penaeus vannamei in the country. The facility was created by the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), Government of India with funding assistance from the Ministry of Commerce & Industry (MoCI) and the National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB).
The vannamei shrimp in India
A native to the Pacific coast of Mexico, Central and South America, P. vannamei occupies the prime position in the list of cultured shrimp species in Latin America, over the past 20 years. With the development of the first population of SPF P. vannamei, and its commercialisation in more than 67 countries across the world, including Southeast Asia, India too successfully introduced its culture. The species now accounts for 77% of the total global production of shrimp and almost 94% of Indian’s shrimp production in 2019. Until 2009, shrimp culture in India had been monocentric, with emphasis on the black tiger shrimp Penaeus monodon. Monodon-based aquaculture and production had been
September/October 2021 AQUA Culture Asia Pacific
spectacular until it experienced severe setbacks due to the emergence of viral diseases during 2005-2008. Shrimp production stagnated and declined to less than 80,000 tonnes and led Indian shrimp farmers to realise that wild and undomesticated broodstock could no longer sustain the shrimp farming sector in the long run. This urged the Indian Government to permit commercial culture of P. vannamei which was already the main species being farmed in most Southeast Asian countries. Accordingly, the Government permitted imports of SPF P. vannamei broodstock after taking adequate management measures to mitigate risks associated with the introduction of the exotic shrimp. One such measure is the establishment of a dedicated quarantine facility for P. vannamei broodstock. Since then, its production and exports surged exponentially. By 2019, India rose to second position among farmed shrimp producing countries of the world.
About AQF
The AQF, is a central Government run quarantine facility dedicated to serve the shrimp sector. It has 20 quarantine cubicles with well-designed biosecure infrastructure to accommodate and quarantine imported broodstock, arriving from various broodstock suppliers, across the globe. The facility has also a dedicated Parent Postlarvae Quarantine (PPQ) unit to quarantine the post larvae that are imported by government approved Broodstock Multiplication Centres (BMC). The quarantine capacity of AQF is about 412,500 broodstock per annum.
