A study on the knowledge and perception level of rural youth towards adoption of aquaculture as an income generating source in coastal Odisha

Pisciculture contributes around 1% to India’s gross domestic product and over 5% to the agricultural GDP. The study was conducted in Balikuda, Biridi, Erasama, Jagatsinghpur, Kujanga, Naugaon, Raghunathpur and Tirtol blocks of Jagatsinghpur district. Both purposive and multistage random sampling methods were adopted for selection of the district, gram panchayat, village and respondents. A total of 180 numbers of respondents were selected for the purpose of the investigation. Based on the descriptive statistics, most of the respondents had medium knowledge about the general pond requirement and manuring and fertilization of the culture pond and harvesting. On the other hand, the youth entrepreneurs in pisciculture had low level of knowledge on predatory and weed fish eradication, stocking of the pisciculture. The youth entrepreneurs in pisciculture had high level of knowledge on harvesting of the pisciculture. Under marketing and storage perception factors 40.55 per cent of the respondents were strongly agreed with preservation of undisposed fishes is difficult. The main aim of pisciculture development program was for making substantial contributions to doubling of food production, improving the welfare of youth entrepreneurs, promoting exports and providing food and livelihood security to its rural youth entrepreneurs.