Microbial Consortium for Waste Management in Aquaculture Ponds

Aquaculture has been identified as the major resource to satiate the growing food requirement world population. India being one of the major producers of aquaculture products, have taken several steps to improve the production. The remarkable changes include the use of hatchery reared larvae, introduction of artificial feeds and high-density stocking. The high-density cultivation offish and shellfish are prone to bacterial and viral infections which have incurred severe setback to the sector. As per the reports of a recent survey (Patil et al 2021, Aquaculture), The Indian shrimp aquaculture industry alone suffered an economic loss of US$ 1.2 B and employment loss of 1.65 M man-days worth US$ 7.7 M due to microbial infections annually. Many of these problems are originated from excessive accumulation of organic waste in the pond bottom, which trigger problems such as water quality deterioration, proliferation of weeds and disease outbreaks. The current product is designed to solve the first problem, i.e. waste accumulation in aquaculture ponds and thus avoid the subsequent consequences such as water quality deterioration, proliferation of weeds and disease outbreaks. The efficacy of the product has been tested in aquaculture ponds in Kerala, Karnataka and Gujarat.

Microbial consortium have potential application in aquaculture ponds.

The microbial consortium is composed of a group of five bacteria (MMRF 578, MMRF 584, MMRF 1056, MMRF 1057 and MMRF 1058) isolated from mud bank of Kerala and Cochin Estuary. The bacteria used in the design of consortium were individually selected from a group of more than 500 bacteria isolated from the mud banks, characterized by a high load of suspended solids, and Cochin estuary, based on their enzyme activities. These bacteria were non-antagonistic to each other or not pathogenic to higher organisms. They were good producers of enzymes to degrade the starch, gelatin, phosphate, Tween 80, chitin, pectin, inulin, and xylan. The regular application of the consortium was proven to be effective in remineralizing the organic waste generated in aquaculture ponds. A visual impact of the technology was that application of this consortium reduces the growth macroalgal weeds in aquaculture ponds