Finfish-Based Bioaugmentation Technology for Enhancing Shrimp Grower’s Income and Livelihood

Penaeid shrimp culture has become an important economic activity in many countries, particularly in Asia. However, environmental challenges and bacterial and viral disease outbreaks are being increasingly recognized as significant constraints on aquaculture production and trade worldwide. Diverse bacterial genera have been associated with infections of penaeid shrimp, but vibriosis is one of the mainly severe bacterial diseases which cause mortality, have been reported in penaeid shrimp culture systems. Tiger shrimp Penaeus monodon and white shrimp Penaeus vannamei are susceptible to fatal effects of luminous vibriosis in India, creating economic losses. There is always a need to control Vibrio harveyi in brackish water shrimp aquaculture. Green water culture system is a biological approach, which integrates the culture of economically important euryhaline finfish as bioaugmentors in the reservoir or net cages/pens in the shrimp growing ponds through zero-water exchange and recirculatory system. The secretions of slime enhance the production of green water which not only suppress the proliferation of luminous bacteria, but also improves the water quality by removing nutrient. In this paper, a hypothesis has been proposed to utilize green water technology as a bioaugmentation technology based on integration of fish green slime beneficial bacteria and their bioactives for controlling priority pathogens in freshwater and brackish water shrimp aquaculture systems for achieving higher shrimp production and enhancing farmers income and livelihood.