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How profitability assessment parameters score under large-scale commercial cultivation of different agarophyte seaweeds along south-eastern coast of India

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Abstract

Mass mortality of Kappaphycus alvarezii in India has severely hindered the employment opportunity of fishermen by diverting them to less-remunerative seaweed collection sector. The depletion of resources due to over-harvesting coupled with ongoing global supply chain crisis offers excellent opportunity to initiate commercial farming of agarophytes. The productivity and financial implications in terms of profitability assessment parameters have not been attempted before for Indian agarophytes. The comparison between four species, namely Gelidiella acerosa, Gracilaria debilis, G. dura and G. edulis under deployment scenarios (1TPD and 5 TPD), revealed G. debilis as productive spices in terms of requirement of rafts (9,000–163,636), area under farming (3.6–65.45 ha) and persons involved (100–1,818). It reported minimum payback period of 0.3 years, breakeven point of 66.56 tons of biomass with and highest internal rate of returns of 237.6% for high range yield scenario. All the agarophytes except G. acerosa registered profit, with maximum (0.46 million USD) reported for G. dura, followed by G. debilis (0.19 million USD) under yield scenario of 5-TPD. Thus, the present investigation confirms that commercial cultivation of G. debilis farming can be viable alternative to the fishermen along the south-eastern coast of India due to low skill set and small investment.

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Acknowledgements

The financial support from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Director CSIR-CSMCRI for its facilities. We thank Dr. Ronan Sulpice, Associate Editor and anonymous reviewer for constructive comments. This manuscript has PRIS registration no132/2020.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIR-Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute, Bhavnagar, 364021, India

    Vaibhav A. Mantri, Ramalingam Dineshkumar & Anshul Yadav

  2. Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, 201002, India

    Vaibhav A. Mantri, Ramalingam Dineshkumar, V. Veeragurunathan, M. Ganesan & K. Eswaran

  3. CSIR-CSMCRI-Marine Algal Research Station, Mandapam Camp, 623519, India

    V. Veeragurunathan, M. Ganesan, K. Eswaran & S. Thiruppathi

Authors
  1. Vaibhav A. Mantri
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  2. Ramalingam Dineshkumar
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  3. Anshul Yadav
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  4. V. Veeragurunathan
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  5. M. Ganesan
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  6. K. Eswaran
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  7. S. Thiruppathi
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Contributions

Vaibhav A. Mantri: Conceptualising and planning of the work, data analysis and interpretation and manuscript preparation; Ramalingam Dineshkumar: Data analysis for profitability assessment parameters, namely payback period, breakeven point and net present value, interpretation of results and manuscript preparation; Anshul Yadav: Data analysis for payback period, breakeven point and net present value, interpretation of results and manuscript preparation, economic feasibility total cost, total revenue and profit; V. Veeragurunathan: Data collection and processing for 1 tons per day (1 TPD) and 5 tons per day (5 TPD) dry biomass through aquaculture of Gracilaria debilis and G. dura; M. Ganesan: Data collection and processing for 1 tons per day (1 TPD) and 5 tons per day (5 TPD) dry biomass through aquaculture of Gelidiella acerosa; K. Eswaran: Data collection and processing for 1 tons per day (1 TPD) and 5 tons per day (5 TPD) dry biomass through aquaculture of Gracilaria edulis; S. Thiruppathi: Data collection and processing for high and low yield scenario.

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Correspondence to Vaibhav A. Mantri.

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Mantri, V.A., Dineshkumar, R., Yadav, A. et al. How profitability assessment parameters score under large-scale commercial cultivation of different agarophyte seaweeds along south-eastern coast of India. Aquacult Int 30, 1505–1525 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-022-00866-y

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