Abstract:
At present, 45 hatcheries operate in the North Western Province of Sri Lanka to supply post larvae to the shrimp aquaculture industry. In 2014, considering 27 factors, including available facilities and level of Better Management Practices implemented, all the hatcheries categorized into 5 grades as A to E. All E graded hatcheries had been upgraded as a compulsory requirement to issue the aquaculture management license. This study was carried out to evaluate the hatchery grading system and 26 shrimp hatcheries were selected among 45, using stratified sampling and lottery method. Selected hatcheries were evaluated using the same criteria and graded as 3 of B, 20 of C and 3 of D grade. As their production records the actual production of the hatcheries is found to be 1.55 ± 0.74 times higher than the estimated capacity. FICA and Multiple Regression were done to identily the most effective factors to the grading and it reveals PC1 was positively influenced by all the -factors (p<0.05). 14 factors were negatively loaded in PC2 axis. Detailed Descriptive Analysis for production based factors reveals that, the percentage implementation of Wet feed, Dry feed, Spawning, Hatching and Indoor algae was recorded at 34.6%, 23.1%, 61.5%, 76.9%, & 46.2% respectively. It was recorded the proper water quality testing for the Total Vibrio Count or Total Bacteria Count was not followed by any hatchery. Record keeping is not comply with required information to evaluate the quality of the final product of post larvae. Legal right is identified as a compulsory requirement that essential to fulfilled by each hatchery prior to commence the production and should not be evaluated for the grading. Contradiction of these findings indicated that the necessity of revalidation of the hatchery grading system for better performance of the post larvae production.
Key words: - Penaeus monodon, Hatchery grading, Total Vibrio Count, Total Bacteria Count
