Marketing channels and price spread of aquaculture products.

Shrimps occupy a commanding position in the global market by virtue of its ever increasing demand and competetive international prices. A major advantage of aquaculture is that production can be market oriented as against the production oriented marketing in capture fisheries, A proper understanding of consumer demand and the consumers attitudes is a major pre-requisite in planning a viable aquaculture production programme. The systems and technologies of farming to be adopted will also be governed by the nature of the market. It is also quite obvious that the quality and size at harvest, as well as the methods of processing depends very much on the market. The world market for shrimp has been doubled within the last 10 years and aquaculture race for shrimp has started vigoursly in many parts of the world. As the production increases the market is also expanding every year due to the increase indispensable income of the consumers together with the increased rate of consumption. Commercial shrimp landing in the world is now reportedly stagnating at 1.7 million tonnes and the only alternate means of increasing production is to resort to shrimp culture