College of Fisheries, GADVASU, Ludhiana earned a research project entitled “Extension tools for strengthening technical support to fish farmers” with a total budget of 14.5 lakhs for a period of 1 ¼ years and major focus on developing effective extension tools for extending the much needed technical support to the fish farmers to fill in the exiting technological gaps and manage their ponds more scientifically for higher productivity and profitability.
According to Dr Meera D Ansal, Sr Scientist cum Head and PI of the project, under this project, a bank of ‘Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)’ by the fish farmers will be prepared which will help the farmers to find quick answers to their common queries, which will be made available to the farmers in the form booklets, besides assess on university website. In addition to ‘Answers to FAQs’, a farmer network through social media networking (Facebook/WhatsApp) will also be developed for quick sharing of information among the farmers as well as between the farmers and experts. Technical videos/posters will also be developed under this project for demonstration purpose during trainings, pashu palan melas and exhibitions. She further added that it is essential to identify the existing gaps for designing an effective technical backup programme for the farmers and a survey based data base will be generated to record these gaps and formulate region specific action plan for technical support to fish farmers.
Dr. S.N.S. Randhawa, Director of Research, GADVASU, said that it is very important to ensure an efficient ‘Lab to Land’ program for commercial adoption of developed technologies and it can only be achieved through developing farmer friendly extension tools, which are not simple to use, but also easy to assess.
