The culture potential of the brackish river prawn Macrobrachium macrobrachion (Herklots, 1851) reared under three management strategies.

The culture of shrimps is an alternative to the farming of fin fishes. In this study, post larvae of Macrobrachium macrobrachion were reared in earthen ponds for nine months under three feeding strategies. The first strategy was intensive feeding with Coppens (commercial feed), the other two feeding plans were semi-intensive and extensive (Commercial /natural foods). Each feeding plan was replicated thrice. Animals grew from the initial weight of 0.29 gm to 10.10 gm in 270 days under semi-intensive conditions. Significant differences were not determined in the growth rates of animals grown under extensive and intensive conditions (P>0.05). However, individuals maintained under semi-intensive conditions exhibited higher growth rates than those under intensive and extensive conditions. But, the Production Efficiency (PE) calculated for the three strategies were similar (P>0.05) giving 0.031, 0.029 and 0.026 for intensive, semiintensive and extensive situations respectively. Specific growth rates were significantly different in individuals reared under semi-intensive conditions when compared to those from the other feeding plans (P>0.001). Growth rates were also two times higher in individuals grown semi-intensively than in those grown in the other culture strategies. Survival rates were high giving 92.8%, 89.2% and 89.8% in semiintensive, extensive and intensive strategies. The FCR for semi-intensive, and intensive systems were.0.7 and 0.4 respectively. These results are compared with existing data on the species and results from other cultured shrimp world over.