Freshwater prawn farming gains ground in northern Iran

The Sepid-Rud Fisheries Research Site in Astaneh Ashrafiyeh, 35 kilometers northeast of the provincial capital Rasht, as a pioneer of the industry, has recently set a 1,825-kilogram per hectare production record.

Giant River Prawn larvae were caught from the Anzali Wetland and the Aras Dam reservoir and were grown in nurseries before being transferred into grow-out ponds, where the prawns are fed and grown until they reach marketable size. Giant River Prawns have been farmed using traditional methods in south-east Asia for a long time.

First experiments with artificial breeding cultures of this species were done in the early 1960s in Malaysia. The global annual production of freshwater prawns (excluding crayfish and crabs) in 2003 was about 280,000 tons.

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