ICAR-Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture (ICAR-CIBA) conducted a nation workshop on Aquaculture Land Use Planning – Gaps, Challenges and Way forward on 29.06.2026 at Chennai. Shri. Devasenapathy, IAS, the Member Secretary, CAA, Dr. Chelsasini, Director of Fisheries, Dr.P. Krishnan, Director, Bay of Bengal, Dr.Mohamed Koya, Fisheries Development Commissioner, Govt. of India. Dr.A.G.Ponniah, Former-Director, CIBA, Dr.Kuldeep K Lal, Director ICAR-CIBA, Officials from the coastal states, shrimp industry representatives and scientists of CIBA participated in the workshop.
ICAR-CIBA has developed a Regulated Aquaculture Zone Planning (RAZP) tool kit to identify potential land resources for aquaculture incorporating remote sensing, ground truth surveys for soil and water quality, compliance with the regulatory guidelines of the Coastal Aquaculture Authority (CAA), aquaculture zonation for selected species and preparing an aquaculture atlas and with a capacity building the officials of state department fisheries for implementing the aquaculture planning. The workshop was conducted to sensitize the states about the RAZP tool kit for aquaculture planning and deliberate on the state specific issues in responsible development of aquaculture in the states.
Shri. Devasenapathy, IAS, Secretary, CAA underlined that evert state which wishes to promote aquaculture should start with RAZP to minimise the conflicts and other issues associated with aquaculture planning. Land, soil, water quality parameters restrict the development of other sectors and paves for coastal aquaculture. Therefore, proper planning helps in efficient use of resources, RAZP is the blue print for that. RAZP can help in mid-course corrections of regulatory guidelines which needs to be state specific. He declared that the CAA would fund state specific workshops to discuss the resource availability and policy making.
Dr. Kuldeep K Lal in his context setting remarks highlighted that RAZP helps in area and species zonation including the traceability of aquaculture sites avoiding land use conflicts with other primary production sectors like agriculture and facilitate the structured aquaculture with adherence to food safety.
Dr.Mohammed Koya, Fisheries Development Commissioner, Govt. of India felt that RAZP is one of the best outputs brought out by CIBA. The methodology of RAZP may be presented to Fisheries Ministry, Govt. of India for wider consultations and upscaling is possible.
Dr.P.Krishnan, Director, BoBP cautioned that the CAA needs to give the legitimacy to the RAZP and the methodology so that the development departments can adopt RAZP for aquaculture planning.
Dr A.G Ponniah remarked that in RAZP the science getting translated to the language on which the state regulators desire and suggested that Precision aquaculture – drone technology – for mapping, spectral images can be used for shrimp farms.
Dr.M.Jayanthi, Principal Scientist and team lead gave a detailed presentation on the RAZP tool kit with case studies of Maharastra and Gujarat states and expressed that even climate change factors like drought and flood can also be integrated in to the toolkit.
During the workshop A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between ICAR-CIBA and the CAA for preparing the technical content and engaging social media for dissemination of coastal aquaculture technology through the press, media including the social media.
