Study on Existing Technology and Knowledge on Aquaculture by Fish Farmers in Gomastapur Upazila of Chapai Nawabgonj District, Bangladesh

A total of 150 farmers from three unions in Gomastapur upazila under Chapai Nawabgonj district were selected for determination of their aquaculture technology and knowledge. In this study, 83% of the fish farmers were adopted with extensive technology and rest 17% with semi-intensive technology. The aquaculture knowledge consisted of 6 levels such as, remembering, understanding, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating and creating. The aquaculture knowledge of the fish farmers on different aspect of pond fish culture practices such as, pond biology, pond preparation, species selection and stocking density, water colour monitoring, pond fertilization, feed and feeding, disease control, harvesting and restocking, risk management and marketing revealed that most of the fish farmers belonged to low knowledge category. A few portion of the fish farmers had high knowledge. Most of the fish farmers had relatively better score on the first two levels (remembering and understanding) of knowledge. The farmers had low score on the analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating and creating component of knowledge. Among the personal characteristics of the farmers’ education, extension media contact and aquaculture training experience were observed to be significant and positively related with their fisheries knowledge. But age, total income, religious affiliation and family size of the respondents had no relation with aquaculture knowledge.