Nutritional Intervention for Sustainable Production in Inland Saline Aquaculture A Budding Perspective in India

Optimum utilization of available resources has became a necessary due to increasing population pressure in the developing nations. The burgeoning population put thrust on each and every resource to be utilised wisely and sustainably for production of food specially quality protein to feed the population and eradicate malnutrition. Among such underutilised resources, the saline affected land is about 10.1 million ha in India, which suffer from soil salinity problem. However, during the last decade several agencies have given divergent estimates about Indian inland saline area, as National Commission on Agriculture, 7.16 million ha; National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, 6.2 million ha. The data from various sources were critically evaluated at central soil salinity Research Institute, Karnal and figure has now been modified to 7.4 million ha as depicted by the graph below. Since the use of such land and under lying ground saline water is very restricted, so inland saline aquaculture i. e. culture of aquatic animals and plants using inland (Non-coastal) sources of saline ground water are very promising for its sustainable use. Due to non-utilization of ground saline water, the water table in these areas is rising with an alarming rate causing secondary salinization and water logging conditions leading to fertile productive land being gradually unproductive with poor quality water. Pumping of ground saline water therefore is necessary to lower down the water table to a safer root zone so that surface soil remains un-affected with salinity problem providing good soil conditions for adjacent agriculture crops. Pumping of saline water and its safe disposal in landlocked area is a challenging task and possible only through evapo-transpiration, which is a very costly affair; this could be made economically viable through aquaculture practices in which large proportion of water could be evaporated from aquaculture ponds along with production of high income generating fish/prawn/shrimp crops. However, this is not as simple as in coastal waters, since inland saline water is totally different from fresh, brackish and marine water due to unbalanced ionic composition of inland saline water.