ICAR-CIBA-IRC, the 34th review meeting was conducted during 17th to 19th May 2017 at the headquarters of CIBA, Chennai. The meeting started with the welcome address by the member secretary and followed self-introduction of all the members to the gathering, where all the scientists and technical persons were present. This was followed by the opening remarks of Dr. K.K.Vijayan, Chairman, IRC, and director of CIBA, who also made a general presentation on the CIBA R&D profile and research focus with respect to the Indian brackishwater aquaculture sector.
In his address, the Chairman stressed the scientists to feel the responsibility and institutional pride. He asked all to understand the need of the sector and the research priorities. Particularly for the newly joined and young scientists, he suggested them to be self –motivated, have a strong passion for science, to become the game changers with their innovations in science and serve as brand ambassadors of the institute. Due to the changes in administrative system, particularly the formation of NITI Aayog, and proposed plans of the government, such as the need for doubling the income of farmers, he informed the scientists to generate new ideas to the coup of with the changing government policies and need of the sector with a focus on farmers at large. In this regards, he also stressed the importance of teamwork in achieving the goal. The Chairman expressed his happiness on the broad heterogeneity of scientists with their expertise and representation from all parts of India and opined that translating the research findings of CIBA to any of the Indian state and language will be without any difficulty which is very unique for the institute. As the institute is representing a very dynamic sector, he suggested in sharing knowledge and orienting the individual’s work to institute mandate and objectives. He also asked the scientists to self-retrospect and have introspection in their planning and execution while dealing with the challenging sector. In his presentation, he stressed on the need to have more focus on some of the burning aspects like species diversification, climate change, disease issues, formulated feeds and novel nutritional initiatives, family farming, and resource mapping.
He pointed out the extent of challenges in maintaining the sustainability of brackish water aquaculture and therefore suggested to have collaboration with several other sectors and more particularly with the State Fisheries Departments. He also pointed out the need to feel happiness, maintain self-respect and feel satisfaction through their scientific activities while orienting their effort towards sectorial development. This IRC was also an occasion to release the CIBA newsletter the ‘CIBANEWS’, which got revived after a gap of many years. Director of CIBA released the first two special issues during the 1st day of the IRC.
This was followed by presentations from individual scientists of the 5 divisions, viz., crustacean culture (CCD), fish culture (FCD), nutrition, genetics and biotechnology (NGBD), aquatic animal health and social science (SSD). There was a thorough discussion on each of the aspects, after the respective presentations by individuals, and suggestions were provided in modifying the activities wherever it was necessary.
In his concluding remarks, Director of CIBA, Dr. K. K. Vijayan touched on several general aspects including proper utilisation of institutional facilities and keeping the discipline and cleanliness in the campus, maintaining proper system and care indenting equipment, their use and maintenance. While encouraging all to have collaboration with other institutes like IIT, NIOT, Universities and others, with common interests, he advised all in strongly protecting the interest of the institute. As CIBA has several research scholars working under various funded and institutional projects, and also pursuing their Ph.D. he suggested their proper mentoring and encourage to document research outputs as credible publication sin time. He also encouraged all the scientists to exploit all the funding opportunities, both national and international, to boost the maximum funding support for CIBA research activities. The meeting concluded with the vote of thanks from Dr. S.K. Otta, Member Secretary, 34th IRC.
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