The giant freshwater prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii, popularly known as ‘scampi, is set to stage a come back to platters of food lovers as scientists of Central Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture (CIFA) developed a genetically improved strain of the prawn.
India, which was one of the major producers of this species, had seen its production going down substantially since 2006 on account of poor growth rate, diseases, inbreeding in farmers’ farms and availability of high-volume producers such as vannamei shrimp and pangas fish. Since scampi’s size had shrunk, fish farmers had also withdrawn from its aquaculture.
Now, CIFA, an Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) organisation, has successfully developed a genetically improved fast-growing strain named CIFA-GI Scampi, which received official registration in 2020.
