A two-day virtual workshop was conducted by ICAR-CIBA on ‘Diversifying crustacean culture: developing future climate resilience’ in collaboration with University of Southampton, UK and The Pirbright Institute, UK on 22nd and 23rd March 2022 as part of the international collaborative project, ‘Diversification of potential crop species in brackishwater aquaculture, adaptation for climate resilience’ funded by Natural Environment Research Council, UK. The two days scientific deliberations consist of presentations, panel discussion from various stakeholders. Declaring the workshop open, Dr. K.P. Jithendran, Director, ICAR-CIBA stressed up on the importance of understanding the biology of shrimp species in accordance with climate change and adaptations for transformation of shrimp farming in India. Prof. Chris Hauton, University of Southampton, UK and the international PI, has given the genesis and perspective of the project. Dr. K. Ambasankar, Principal Scientist and Principal Investigator from the Indian side of the project explained the impact of climate change and its current relevance to crustacean farming in India and wider Asia. This was followed by the presentation on ‘Indian climate variability, extremes and trends over 1950-2050 in a high-fidelity climate model’ by Prof. Robert Marsh, University of Southampton, UK. In the presentation he has explained the simulation models to analyze and predict the extreme climatic events in India and given estimation that the dry areas will become drier and wet areas will become wetter. Prof. Chris Hauton has presented on ‘Species envelopes: temperature and salinity tolerance windows of aquaculture relevant crustaceans’. This was followed by a presentation on ‘Salinity and temperature tolerance of Penaeid shrimps: Preliminary findings based on the lab and field data’ by Dr. K. Ambasankar. Dr. M.S. Shekhar, Principal Scientist has highlighted the subject on ‘Application of Genomics in climate resilience with special reference to P. indicus genome’. The expert panelists from aquaculture sector participated in the panel discussion includes Mr. S. Santhanakrishnan, Founder President, Society for Aquaculture Professionals, Dr. George Chamberlain, President, Global Seafood Alliance, USA, Dr. P. Krishnan, Director, Bay of Bengal Programme Inter-Governmental Organisation, India, Dr. Antony Jesu Prabhu, Senior Researcher, Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway, Dr. Manoj Sharma, President, Gujarat Aqua Feed Dealers Association, Dr. J.K. Sundaray, Principal Scientist & Head, Division of Fish Genetics & Biotechnology, ICAR-CIFA, Bhubaneshwar, India, Dr. Abdus Salam, Professor, Department of Aquaculture, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Bangladesh and Dr. A.P. Dineshbabu, Principal Scientist, ICAR-CMFRI, Mangalore Centre, India. International panellist and participants from UK, USA, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh and Indonesia participated in the event along with 100 attendees from all the shrimp farming regions in the India. The workshop was concluded with the clear recommendations of the urgent necessity to diversify the shrimp species and emphasized that the climate resilient shrimp farming should be adapted based on the holistic study on various factors like salinity, temperature, carrying capacity, quality of feed, age at maturity, marketability of species etc.
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