Advisories on Fish Farming in Tripura for Coping with COVID 19: An Outlook

ABSTRACT

The usage of mobile-based agro-advisories and its utilization pattern was unclear, especially in the case of fisheries and aquaculture in Tripura, coming under the North-Eastern region of India, where 1.87 lakh population was primarily identified as fish farmers. Similar to other parts of the country, the COVID-19 outbreak hampered fishery and aquaculture in Tripura, and farmers were physically barred from accessing support systems and technical facilities of different organizations. In view of that, the present study was performed to identify all such mobile-based advisories related to fish farming, which were actively circulated in the state during the COVID-19 outbreak. The accessibility, perceived level of satisfaction, and utility of those mobile-based advisories were studied. It was found that out of 120 respondents, 102 actively sought/accessed some of these advisory services. The advisory on fish farming, released by the Department of Fisheries (DoF), Tripura, was accessed by more than half of the respondents (54.17 %), followed by 'Mobile Based Agro-Advisory' system (20.83 %) under the 'Matsya Varta' project of College of Fisheries, Central Agricultural University (COF-CAU), Tripura. Other advisories from KVKs were also accessed by the respondents (9.16 %) indicating a significant rate of accessibility and utility. The findings suggest the existence of adequate advisory services in the state during COVID-19 outbreak.