Transforming Inland Fisheries: ICAR-CIFRI’s Glorious Journey.

Started as Central Inland Fisheries Research Station in March, 1947 at Barrackpore, West Bengal, ICAR-CIFRI has carved a niche in inland fisheries research. Induced fish breeding, composite fish culture and other scientific fish production practices developed during the sixties by the Institute helped in bringing the blue revolution in the country. Reservoirs and wetland fisheries management technologies developed and disseminated by the institute resulted in enhanced fish production from these resources. By the turn of the year 2000, the research and development agenda of the Institute concerning inland open waters shifted from fish as the only benefit to ecosystem health and ecological benefits with emphasis on sustainability, livelihood and nutritional security.

During the last 10 years the institute has concentrated its focus on habitat characterisation, restoration of fisheries in rivers and estuaries for ecosystem integrity and conservation of fish stocks; investigation on environmental flows, ecosystem based fisheries management in reservoirs and wetlands including enhancement protocols; domestication, breeding, culture and ranching for protection and conservation of hilsa fisheries; fish health management and anti-microbial resistance in inland open waters; nutrient profiling of food fishes, ecosystem services valuation, climate change, environmental impact assessment, methodologies/mobile applications for fish catch data estimation and acquisition, IoT based and drone technologies, socio-economics and capacity building of the fishers.

Reservoir management guidelines, including culture-based fisheries enhanced the average fish production of reservoirs of various categories to 110 kg/ha/year from 20 kg/ha/year. The Institute has been continuously striving to replenish the native fish stock through ranching, awareness, and other conservation programmes. Till date around 1.5 crores of IMC fingerlings have been released into the river Ganga. CIFRI GI cages produce 3 MT of fishes per cage of 96 m³ size, which can further revolutionize fish production in the country if the cages are installed to their full potential in the reservoirs. Breakthroughs have been achieved in hilsa research in the form of artificial breeding technique with cryopreserved milt. 

CIFRI CAGEGROW, BSF Floating Fish Feed, RESHMEEN are three fish feeds developed by the institute in the last couple of years, which are nutritionally balanced with better digestibility. CIFRI Fish Tanavhari and CIFRI ARGCURE are the two health care products released by the institute with the objectives of reducing disease loss and harnessing higher returns. CIFRI GI cage, CIFRI Circular Cage, CIFRI FRP Coracle, CIFRI FRP Ornamental tank were the other technologies recently commercialised by the institute. Two patents, namely ‘Vertical Gel Electrophoresis’ and ‘Portable Split Beam Transducer Assembly on Water Craft for Measuring Exact Transducer Position Below the Water’ were obtained. The efforts of the institute have started yielding dividends. The country has become the world’s top producer of inland capture fishes with an annual production of 1.89 million tonnes, surpassing China.

Capacity building of the stakeholders is one of the major mandates of the institute. A total of 316 trainings were organized for fishers/fish farmers/students and department officials covering 12674 trainees in the last ten years. Significant resources were deployed for livelihood improvement of the socially disadvantaged groups like Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste. In the last 10 years, around 9840 numbers of direct beneficiaries of West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala were covered under these programmes by providing inputs like fish seed, fish feed, FRP tanks, ornamental fish kit, pen, boats, coracles etc which addressed the SDGs 1, 2, 5, 8,12,13 and 14.

The institute produced many stalwarts in the field of fisheries. CIFRI’s alumni Dr. V.G. Jhingran, Dr. S. Ayyappan and Dr. M. V. Gupta are the recipient of coveted Padmashri award in the fisheries fraternity of the country. Eminent scientists like Dr. B.K. Das, Dr. Dipesh Debnath, Dr. Vikash Kumar, Dr. B.K. Behera of this institute are still considered to be the world’s best, as published by Stanford University.

Team Maverick.