: Opinion: Disruptive tech to drive aquaculture #IndiaNEWS #News By M Krishnan, Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan Agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture startups are no more a preserve of entrepreneurs

Opinion: Disruptive tech to drive aquaculture #IndiaNEWS #News
By M Krishnan, Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan
Agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture startups are no more a preserve of entrepreneurs with an academic background in these core disciplines. They are well populated by cross-discipline incubates that include computer engineers and business graduates with skills in disruptive technologies. These positive blips were seen while evaluating startup project proposals in fisheries and aquaculture submitted to the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC).
Fisheries and aquaculture are an important source of food production, nutritional security, employment and income in India. The fisheries sector is a direct source of livelihood for more than 20 million fishers and fish farmers contributing Rs 1. 75 lakh annually to the gross value added of the country’s economy. It is a major export earner, with fish contributing as much as 21% value to agricultural commodities exported from India. The sector has demonstrated an outstanding double-digit average annual growth of 10. 87% since 2014-15 with record fish production of 145 lakh tonnes in FY2020-21. India exported 11,49,341 million tonnes of marine products worth Rs 43,717. 26 crore (. 96 billion) during FY21.
Tapping Potential
Realising the sector’s potential, the government has set a national target to increase fish production to 22 million tonnes by 2024-25. This will have a positive impact on 28 million fishers and fish farmers, especially the marginalised and vulnerable communities, and almost twice that number along fish-related value chains.
Human demand for nutrient-rich fish and seafood is already being met with aquaculture and the fisheries sector adopting hi-tech approaches. This momentum in demand for fish picked up with the call of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to increase the consumption of fish protein in daily diet during Covid-19. Various projects, which include integration of information technology, data science and artificial intelligence with fishing and aquaculture methods, sustainable exploitation of natural fishery resources and mechanisation-automation of allied activities, are in various stages of fruition.
The different components of disruptive technologies are being engineered for making quick forays into developing tools for mining complex datasets, engaging in analysing cause-effect relationships, forecasting problems and generating smart-precision solutions for aquaculture and marine fisheries.
Attracting Startups
Multiple approaches to infuse disruptive technologies into fisheries and aquaculture are being experimented by startups. AI and IoT-based, low-risk, comprehensive biofloc solution for small-scale fisheries, IoT tools-managed water hyacinth-based fish feeds production, plug-n-play application to sense biological data points driving real-time shrimp farm management systems, IoT devices for black soldier fly farming for fish/shrimp feed production and monitoring, AI and data mining for in-vitro cultured meat from crustaceans, innovative automated cage compass as intelligent floater on water bodies for monitoring, data mining and instant communication are a few of the startups.

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