The ACI Agribusiness is developing a digital platform called 'Rupali', an android application, under a project to help farmers and other stakeholders get advice and information about aquaculture at their fingertips.
The project will initially target five southwestern districts-Bagerhat, Khulna, Gopalganj, Satkhira and Jessore-the first three have fish productivity below the national average.
The project involving US$ 5,00,000 in its first year is being implemented jointly by ACI Agribusiness and WorldFish.
It will enable fish farmers to increase their productivity and generate more income by giving advice through the digital platform, said Managing Director and CEO of ACI Agribusiness Dr FH Ansarey in an interview with The Financial Express.
Rupali is expected to be launched by the second half of 2019 via a mobile app, website, SMS, and outbound and inbound call centres.
The project has a target to have 7,500 users in the first year and 45,000 or more in the second year.
Farmers, retailers, dealers of feed and aqua chemicals and pond mechanisation equipment, hatchery owners, fish wholesalers, officials and researchers of government and non-government organisations will be benefited from Rupali app, said Dr Ansarey.
The country now ranks among top five fish-producing countries mainly because of cultured fish, but there is ample room for improvement in the fish culture, he said.
"When the question of cultured fish comes, it is not about how well we harvest fish, it is about how efficiently we rear fish."
"But we found that farmers are getting different yield results from the fish cultivation."
Some are getting profit but some others incurring loss as they apply different methods of fish culture and lack necessary knowledge and technology know-how, said Dr Ansarey.
Rupali will minimise the yield gap, he added.
Under the project, the ACI Agribusiness will analyse water of ponds with geo-imaging and the data will be available through the Rapali app.
"Information regarding chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), dissolved oxygen and dissolved carbon, hygiene situation and fish growth in a certain pond will be available through the app," said the official.
Farmers will get the information free of cost, he added.
The WorldFish will provide management, monitoring and evaluation support for the project and transfer aquaculture-related global best practices.
ACI Agribusiness, the leading aggregator of Agro inputs, and the WorldFish, a nonprofit research organisation working for improvement of fisheries and aquaculture, signed an agreement on the project recently.
Earlier this year, ACI Agribusiness launched Fosholi, a similar advisory service targeting smallholder rice farmers. More than 100,000 farmers have already benefited from it.
Fish farmers will be greatly benefited from Rupali app as well, Dr Ansarey expressed the hope.
Following successful implementation of the project in southwestern region, the ACI Agribusiness will expand the project activity across the country, he added.
ACI Agribusiness, a business division of the Advanced Chemical Industries (ACI) Limited, is driven with a unique vision to create wealth for farmers through providing complete solution to the problems of farmers.
Dr FH Ansarey, a PhD holder in Ecology, thinks the government needs to ease and update some rules and laws for unlocking the potential of fish culture.
More private investment in this sector and more public funds for extensive research can change the sector greatly, he added.
"We have very rich aquaculture resources, we just need to utilise them properly," he said.
