Background:
Sudden deterioration of various water quality parameters results in poor fish growth, invites disease and in severe cases mortality. The water quality crisis can only be managed by adopting water testing based preventive management strategies. Very limited availability of water testing laboratories hampering the sustainable aquaculture growth in the country. Hence, need of the hour is to establish the low-cost and user-friendly standard aquaculture water testing services across the country.:
Technology Details:
The solution of the problem is to provide a low-cost and user-friendly mini-laboratory (portable) facility for field application to provide water testing of freshwater aquaculture pond at farmers' doorstep at right time. It will accelerate the multiplication of aquaculture water testing services across the country with nominal expenditure as compared to a complete laboratory set-up. The package of mini-lab includes a set of reagents, a simple colorimeter and an android-based application for test report generation along with customized recommendation measures based on the test report. It includes water testing reagents for various parameters including water pH, total alkalinity, total hardness, free-carbon di-oxide, dissolved oxygen (DO), total ammonia nitrogen (TAN), nitrite nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen and dissolved phosphate. The periodic monitoring of water quality and adoption of need-based recommendation measures will maintain healthy environment for sustainable fish farming. Further, this innovation will create an opportunity for any aquaculture farmers, aqua-entrepreneurs, aqua-one centers, State Fishery extension officers, KVKs, NGOs to adopt this portable “mini-lab” with short duration training and develop entrepreneurship to provide water testing service at right time at farmers’ doorstep.