Shah Hilal / Aasiya Nazir

Anantnag,Nov 5:Breeding season started in Asia’s largest fisheries farm in South Kashmir’s Anantnag district emerging as the best producer of rainbow trout in the world, private farms are taking to trout rearing and finding it commercially viable. Every year between November and February, eggs are obtained from this trout fish farm. It has a 54 days of breeding period.

At least 90 lakh eggs will be obtained from trout fish at Kokernag fisheries farm this season and officials say they will generate a huge revenue.

Spread over 20 hectares, the farm was set up 36 years ago with support from the European Economic Committee. It started with a single hatchery which has now been upgraded to three hatcheries that supply millions of eyed ova and seeds to beneficiaries, including private fish farmers.

Around 90 lakh eggs will be obtained, farm supervisor Sayed Manzoor Ahmed who has good expertise in fish farming said that the farm is known worldwide for its production.  “Rainbow trout is a cold water fish and its temperature should be between 0 and 20 degrees Celsius. It is rich in protein and boosts immunity and every year income and production increase, he said.

Chief Project Officer (CPO) fisheries farm Mohi-Ud-Din said,“we have our own brooders and get eggs and white milt from them. We rear rainbow trout for commercial purposes only as is done in the rest of the world,” he says, showing the brooders swimming in the clear water of the gushing stream.

Explaining the hatching process, he says, the eggs from females and white milt from male brooders are harvested by stripping their bellies. “The eggs are fertilised in hatcheries by keeping them in trays that are put under running water. It usually takes a month to hatch these eggs into fry, which are put on high protein feed. The fish are shifted from hatcheries to outside and the recipe of feed is changed till it attains table size weight suitable for commercial farming,” Mohi-Ud-Din says.

Mohi-Ud-Din said, “In the last year’s season, we have now sold 6 lakh and Seven thousand eggs to Sikkim, Bhutan and Ladakh From which the farm has earned more than 10 lakh rupees ,he said every year between November and February eggs are obtained from trout fish in this farm Its breeding period is 51 days.  The fish are then first fed in tanks and then transported to water reservoirs before being transported to the sales centers.