CMFRI develops hatchery technology for black seabream

Fish has excellent meat quality and high demand in market

The Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute has developed a hatchery technology for picnic seabream (acanthopagrus berda), a commercially important marine food fish also known as black seabream and goldsilk seabream.

The fish is known for its excellent meat quality and high economic value. It has high demand in the domestic market with a price of around ₹450 to ₹500 a kg.

Locally called karutha yeri , the fish is an well suited to mariculture owing to its fast growth rate, strong resistance to diseases and ability to cope up with wide variations in environmental conditions, said a communication from CMFRI here on Thursday.

The breeding technology, developed by the Karwar Research Centre of CMFRI, is expected to open up enormous scope for the country’s mariculture ventures in the near future through species diversification, said A. Gopalakrishnan, director of CMFRI.

“The next task of the institute is to standardise the farming protocol of the fish as no record of breeding and aquaculture of this fish is available in in the country”, he said. Considering the characteristics of the fish, mariculture of the seabream has great prospects in terms of attracting commercial benefits and meeting growing seafood demand in the near future.

Dr. Gopalakrishnan said that India targeted four to five million tonnes of fish production in the next 10 years from mariculture. Species diversification for mariculture was primarily aimed at achieving the target by enhancing the marine cage farming system across the coastal States of the country, he said.

This is the seventh marine food fish for which breeding technology has been developed by the CMFRI. It took around three years for the CMFRI scientists to develop the seed production technology for this fish.

Earlier, the institute had succeeded in brood stock development of fishes like cobia, silver pompano, Indian pompano, spotted grouper, pink ear emperor and John’s snapper. CMFRI would transfer these technologies to those interested in commercial production of the seeds.