Knowledge Level of the Fish Farmers in Tripura Regarding Scientific Fish Production Practices

Fisheries are an important activity in Tripura, both from economic and nutritional point of view, providing income, employment and food security to the people. Tripura holds the first rank in per capita fish consumption as inland state and is also reported to be experienced highest retail price of fish per kg. in India. However, current level of fish produced in the state is not able to meet the burgeoning demand and hence large amount of fish is being brought from other state of India and Bangladesh. Therefore to identify the extent of knowledge and adoption of improved production practices among farmers, the study was conducted using ex-post facto research design in the purposively selected districts of South Tripura and West Tripura. Two blocks from each district and five villages from each block were selected by simple random sampling method. Ten fish farmers were selected randomly from each village. Thus, total 200 fish farmers were the respondents for the study. The knowledge index was found 54.25. Maximum knowledge gap was found in water exchange and quality monitoring followed by fish handling, storage, transportation, liming and feeding management. Farmers didn't have proper knowledge regarding water quality such as pH, temperature, DO etc. Among the aquafarmers, the variables viz., education, institutional, infrastructural utilization, share of fisheries to total income, training programme attained, risk taking behavior, innovativeness, extension contact, mass media exposure were found to have positive relation with knowledge of farmers, which indicated that when these scores improve, the knowledge could be more and vice versa. A systematic non-formal educational approaches coupled with research on low cost balanced fish feed formulation and wider availability of quality seed are utmost required to achieve the self sufficiency in fish production in the state.