Culture technique of Tengra (Mystus vittatus) with short cycle fish species in the drought prone northern region of Bangladesh

Abstract

The present study was to assess and evaluate the culture potential of Tengra with short-cycle species in the seasonal water bodies of farmers’ fields and disseminate the cultural technologies in a different part of the country. The study was conducted in farmers’ ponds located in the northern region of Bangladesh from May 2017 to September 2018 to find out the most suitable combination of Tengra (Mystus vittatus) with other short-cycle fishes. For this reason, combination viz; tengra+pabda+magur+rajpunti+GIFT was considered for trial (with three treatments/combinations and three replications of each) in seasonal farmers’ ponds at 18 upazilas of the greater Rangpur region to evaluate the growth and yield performance of tengra, M. vittatus under a polyculture system. Three different stocking densities of Tengra viz., 500, 600, and 700 with (100 Magur+10 Rajpunti+5 GIFT) were treated as T1, T2, and T3 respectively. After 5 months of the culture period, (T1) showed significantly (P<0.05) higher production of Tengra (2,035 kg ha-1), total production of fishes (5,592 kg ha-1), and benefit-cost ratio (1.60) among the treatments These combinations were chosen for multi-location testing (MLT) in different locations of the northern region of Bangladesh. Three locations such as Domar (Niphamari); Kaligonj (Lalmonirhat) and Niphamari Sadar were selected for demonstration. After 5 months of multi-location testing the trials with Tengra as the main species, the highest production of Tengra (2252 kg ha-1), total production of fishes (5656 kg ha-1), and benefit-cost ratio (1.65) were found in Kaligonj with significant (P<0.05) difference among three locations. Thus, the results of multi-location trials clearly authenticated the previous findings. Therefore, the technologies of short-cycle fish species should be disseminated to fish farmers and entrepreneurs throughout the semi-arid zone of Bangladesh.