CURRENT AQUACULTURE PRACTICES IN SOME SELECTED AREAS OF DINAJPUR DISTRICT: SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON FISH FEEDS

Abstract

An investigation was carried out to know the current aquaculture practices of selected fish farmers of Dinajpur district that cover six upazilas including Birgonj, Birol, Chirirbandar, Dinajpur sadar, Kaharol and Khansama commencing from July 2016 to June 2017. Along with the demographic information and aquaculture practices of the selected farmers a special emphasis was given to know the use of fish feed ingredients and fish feed in their ponds. With this view, the data from 120 fish farmers by covering six upazilas were collected through questionnaire, focus group discussion (FGD) and cross-check interview from the key informants. The collected data were sorted out and analyzed with the help of Microsoft excel 2010 and SPSS (Ver. 22). The study revealed that 89.20% were male, 88% were Muslim, and they (55.80%) belong to the age group of 41-60 years. In case of education, most of the fish farmers (45.80%) had literacy up to primary level. Majority of the fish farmers (63.30%) had low annual income Tk. up to 50,000. The areas of the pond for 85.8% farmers were less than 0.50 ha with an average depth of 5.03±0.902 ft. About 55% of the selected fish farmers used ground water. The pond water characteristics were found slightly green for in 95% ponds. Polyculture of Indian major carps and exotic carps found to be practiced by all the selected fish farmers. Most of the fish farmers were found to use either home-made or commercial fish feed in their ponds. Among them 30% were used farm made feeds, 40% used commercial feeds and 30% used both farm made and commercial feeds. The commonly used feed ingredients were fishmeal (FM), mustard oil cake (MOC), rice bran (RB), rice polish (RP), broken rice (BR), maize bran (MB), and wheat flour (WF). The average inclusion levels of these ingredients such as RB, MOC, MB, WF, FM, and BM were 33.07, 24.06, 26.09, 36.46, 14.54, and 12.72%, respectively. Fish farmers mixed all these ingredients and formed ball to serve in the pond. Mega feed, Quality feed, Nourish feed, Aftab feed, Provita feed and Eon feed were commonly used in these areas. Most of the fish farmers used floating pellet type commercial feeds. The price of feed ingredients and commercial feeds varies from Tk./kg 22 to 62 and Tk./kg 32 to 110, respectively. Feed were applied manually twice in a day by most of the farmers (95%). About 96.70% farmers had feed storage facility. This baseline information about the current aquaculture practices of the study area could play vital role to improve the aquaculture production in this region as well as the entire Bangladesh.