Dr. S. Ayyappan, Secretary, DARE and Director General, ICAR visited the Central Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture in January. Dr Ayyappan who led the Central Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture (CIFA) during 1996-2000 as Director, said it was a homecoming for him. He was welcomed by Dr. P. Jayasankar, Director, who said that the CIFA family is extremely happy to host the visit. The Institute is celebrating silver jubilee this year and the visit of DG has made it more significant.

The DG visited the farm facilities and the laboratories. He also discussed research priorities in freshwater aquaculture for the XII five year plan. He stressed the ‘Farmer First’ program embarked on by the ICAR must be implemented in its letter and spirit. He stressed the need for scientists to spend 25 percent of their time is the field. The spread of research results and visibility of impact would be the yardsticks for successful farm research.  

He inaugurated four facilities at the Institute: a state of the art feedmill, National Feed Testing Laboratory, digestibility laboratory and physiology wet laboratory.  The feed mill would help scale-up of feed technology and promote feed use by the farmers, helping to enhance fish production. The referral laboratory would help in quality assurance and certification for production of quality fish feed Dr . Jayasankar said.