Current Status and Prospects of Pacific White Shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei (Boone, 1931) Farming in Coastal Districts of Andhra Pradesh in India

The Government of India permitted the Specific Pathogenic Free (SPF) brood stock of Litopenaeus vannamei in 2009. While the majority of the output comes from Andhra Pradesh and this slowly helped the gradual transformation of shrimp culture from Penaeus monodon to L. vannamei. The culture area increased from 264 Ha to 37, 560 Ha during the period from 2009-10 to 2014-15. For the same period the shrimp production increased from 1655 tones to 2, 76, 077 tones in Andhra Pradesh. The shrimp exports from Andhra Pradesh increased to all time high and valued at more than Rs.14, 000 Crores for the year 2014-15. However, of late, the L. vannamei culture is also facing problems of disease menace, lack of availability of quality seed and problem of inbreed brood stock, production of seed from unregistered hatcheries, increased cost of production on account of high feed cost, spurious drugs, chemicals and probiotics, tradability problems. The situation warrants for proactive legislation of the state, establishment of aquatic quarantine facilities, brood stock multiplication centres, control of spurious seed from hatcheries and development of holistic plan for sustainable L. vannamei farming in the state.