Title : Enhancing productivity and sustainability of aquaculture by developing feasible technological interventions
Abstract:
Aquaculture has the potential to transform local economies and livelihoods by providing a sustainable source of food, creating jobs, and promoting economic growth. For the sustainable growth of the aquaculture industry, it is vital to reduce the dependence on land cover, as the area is a scarce resource and its overuse causes various negative impacts on the environment. As total production is proportional to both the area and the productivity, higher production can be achieved with higher productivity without increasing the land cover. A digital tool being devised is an effort to bring the power of machine learning via an end-to-end solution that covers the complete monitoring of the farm and returns insights and recommendations for increasing productivity. The tracking of the aquaculture system will yield crucial environmental parameters that affect the growth of a particular organism. Literature reveals a set of environmental parameters that have a significant impact on the growth of shrimp and seaweed organisms. Various pieces of literature have discretely provided evidence of variations in growth patterns with changing environmental parameters. The paper discusses the developed framework that accomplishes the goal of improving productivity with the help of machine learning by collectively applying the evidence and knowledge gained from literature into a mathematical model. This mathematical model is a non-linear function developed using the ideas of probability and machine learning that maps the environmental parameters, considering them as input variables for the expected growth rate of the organisms in these conditions. The robust framework will help farmers get the most returns from their efforts and increase their income. Added benefits include that it will help stakeholders demarcate geographical locations that favor high productivity based on climate data and reduce the mortality rate of cultivated organisms by maintaining the farm conditions in which they flourish. This is a strong move to mitigate the adverse effects of climate variability. Digital intervention in aquaculture can enhance economic benefits by improving production efficiency and reducing risks.
