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Global scale of freshwater prawn farming
Author(s) -
New Michael B.,
Nair C. Mohanakumaran
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
aquaculture research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.646
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1365-2109
pISSN - 1355-557X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2109.2011.03008.x
Subject(s) - prawn , macrobrachium rosenbergii , fishery , aquaculture , biology , agriculture , macrobrachium , china , ecology , geography , crustacean , fish <actinopterygii> , decapoda , archaeology
In welcoming participants to G iant P rawn 2011, the authors briefly review the current scale of this component of global aquaculture. The expansion of freshwater prawn farming over the 30 years since the first global conference on this topic [ G iant P rawn 1980 ( GP 1980)] is examined. At the time of GP 1980, the output of farmed giant river prawns ( M acrobrachium rosenbergii ) was <3000 t. Almost three decades later (2009) the total annual aquaculture production of all species of freshwater prawns had risen to almost 444 000 t, with a value of US $2.2 billion. The farmed production of M . rosenbergii constituted 51.7% of the global total, while the oriental river prawn M . nipponense (reared totally in C hina) contributed 47.2%. The contribution of the monsoon river prawn M . malcolmsonii remains quite small so far, and does not show in the above percentages because no recent FAO data are available for this species. In 2007, however, the latter species contributed 1.0% of the total global production of freshwater prawns. The major freshwater prawn producing countries are in A sia (e.g. B angladesh, C hina, I ndia, M yanmar, T aiwan, T hailand and V ietnam) but M acrobrachium spp. are also farmed in other continents.