Chennai, Oct 8 (Reporter) Union Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying and Minority Affairs George Kurian on Tusday has witnessed the 8th consecutive harvest of new age shrimp production system. He witnessed it along with the heads of export and Fisheries Development organizations like MPEDA, CAA, NFDB, DoF and representatives of shrimp farming sector from the maritime states at CIBA’s Muttukadu Experimental Station here. The Minister invited the shrimp farming industry to adopt and scale up this new shrimp production system which has the potential to put the Indian shrimp farming in right trajectory. Shrimp farming, the cultivation of shrimp species under controlled conditions, is the proven commercial aquaculture model continued to contribute 70% of seafood export earnings in value terms worth Rs 46,000 crores with a production of around 10 lakh metric tonnes. Despite its significant contributions, the profitability of shrimp farming has been challenged due to production risks-disease, increasing production costs and stagnant farm gate prices for the last 15 years and climatic perturbs and extreme climate change events like extreme diurnal temperature variations, erratic rainfall patterns, floods and cyclones. Therefore, shrimp farmers are looking for an innovative production system which can produce more shrimp per unit area with less energy costs, able to meet the market demands (market driven), climate smart and resilient, a PIB release said...////...